








The Mennonite Church 


and Modernism 


By John Horsch 


Ws 


Printed by 


MENNONITE PUBLISHING HOUSE 
Scottdale, Pa. 


1924 





FOREWORD 


The Mennonite Church of today finds itself 
face to face with the most insidious foe of the 
old Bible faith. Modernism is a perversion and 
denial of the fundamentals of the faith yet, by ar 
obvious distortion of church history, it claims to 
be true Mennonitism, the faith of the Fathers. It 
is safe to say that never before in her history has 
the Church faced such a crisis. 

A few years ago, in the book Modern Reli- 
gious Liberahsm, the writer attempted to set 
forth the issues involved in this conflict, and to 
expose the institutions and persons that have 
defended modernism. In this book liberalism in 
the Mennonite Church was not considered. It is 
a particularly disagreeable task to publicly oppose 
those who are in the same fold with us. But in 
recent years modernism within the Church has 
become more aggressive and defiant in its attitude 
toward the Church. While in the Church papers 
controversy is, on the whole, undesirable and, as 
is generally admitted, should be as much as pos- 
sible avoided, yet it is necessary to meet the 
modernist opposition and to give needed informa- 
tion. There is reason to believe that the great ma- 
jority of those on whom the modernist leaders 
are counting, are lacking information as regards 
their position. 

The success of modernism is in general due 
to its Christian appearance and its dissimulating 


suse of the language of orthodoxy. The principal 
-danger arises from a possible failure on the part 
cof the Church at large to see the real issue. A 
‘conservative, believing body, such as is the Men- 
nonite Church, will not knowingly and consider- 
ately yield to the liberalistic spirit of the age nor 
accept the modernization and denial of the funda- 
mentals of the faith. 

This pamphlet contains various verbatim ex- 
cerpts from the above mentioned book. 


\ Pea 
Scottdale, Pennsylvania. 


CAO Nib be NDS 
Chapter Page 


| MoprerNisM AND Our ATTITUDE TOWARD | 
Lt Say A 


Il Wuat 1s FUNDAMENTALISM? 14 


III Arr A Person’s RELIGIOUS VIEWS OF 


Minor IMPORTANCE? 17 

IV THE GREATEST TRAGEDY 19 
V Tue INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES 25 
VI Tur AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURE 31 
VII Tue Deity oF CHRIST 35 


VIII SALVATION AND CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 39 


IX Tuer Mopernist VIEW oF MISSIONS 48. 
X Tue Soctat GOSPEL 58 
XI Do ScIENCE AND RELIGION CONFLICT? 62 


XII NoONRESISTANCE AND IF UNDAMENTALISM 64 
XIII NonresistANCE AND MoperRnist IDEALISM 71 
XIV Wuat ts Rericious INDIVIDUALISM? 74 

XV  Liperty oF CONSCIENCE 8k 


XVI THe Fairy or Our FatTHERS 86 


AVII 
XVIII 
XIX 
XX 
XXI 


XXII 
XXII 
XXIV 


RESTRICTIONS 92 


Rericious CERTAINTY 103 
CoMPROMISE 107 
Wuo Are TRAITORS? 110 


THE CHURCH AND HIGHER EpDvu- . 
CATION | “112 
GOSHEN COLLEGE FORMERLY AND Now 122 
THE CHRISTIAN EXPONENT 131 
CoNCLUSION Py 


THE MENNONITE CHURCH 
AND MODERNISM 


I 


MODERNISM AND OUR ATTITUDE 
TOWARD IT 


The following definition of modernism, as 
contrasted with fundamentalism, has been pub- 
lished in various liberal and conservative papers. 


It is approved by leaders on both sides. 


The 


terms modernism, liberalism and modern theology 


are synonyms.. 
FUNDAMENTALISM 


1. The Bible IS the Word 
of God. 

2. Jesus Christ is THE Son 
of God in a sense in 
which no other is. 


3. The birth of Jesus was 
SUPERNATURAL. 

4. The death of Jesus was 
EX'PIATORY. 

5. Man is the product of 
Se eClaA LL’ CREA- 
TION. 

6. Man is a SINNER, fall- 
en from original right- 
eousness, and, apart 
from God’s redeeming 
grace is hopelessly lost. 


MODERNISM 


. The Bible CONTAINS 


the Word of God. 


. Jesus Christ is A Son 


of God in the sense 
that ALL men are. 


. The birth of Jesus was 


NATURAL. 


. The death of Jesus was 


EXEMPLARY. 


. Man is the product of 


EVOLUTION. 


. Man is the unfortunate 


VICTIM of environ- 
ment, but through 
self-culture can make 
good. 


8 “THE CHASM IS DEEP” 


7 Man is justified by 7. Man is justified by 
FAITH in the atoning WORKS in following 
blood of Christ. Re- Re- 


ist’ mple. 
sult: Supernatural re- Christ's examp 
generation from  A- sult: Natural -develop- 


BOVE. ment from WITHIN. 

It is seen that the differences and contrasts 
between modernism and fundamentalism, are of 
such nature that they could not be greater. The 
one is the confession of the fundamentals of the 
faith, and the other the denial. The one is faith, 
the other unbelief. Both cannot be one and the 
same religion. 


President A. C. McGiffert, of the Union Theo- 
logical Seminary, New York, a modernist institu- 
tion, says: 

We have learned, not to think of the Bible as the 
final and infallible authority and have come to see 
that there is no such authority and that we need none. 
The result has been a change of simply untold con- ~ 
secuence. The conservatives who feared and op- 
posed Biblical criticism in its early days because 
they saw what a revolution it portended were far 
more clearsighted than most of the liberals who 
thought that it meant simply a shifting of position. 
—The chasm is deep. What is before us na one 
knows. 

One of the most noted defenders of religious 
liberalism, the late Professor George Burman Fos- 
ter, of the University of Chicago, said: 

The sum of what I have just been urging amouats 
to the profoundest change of religious thought known 
to history. — One may say that not supernatural 
regeneration, but natural growth; not divine sanctifi- 
cation, but human education; not supernatural grace, 
but natural morality; not the divine expiation of the 


TWO IRRECONCILABLE POSITIONS 9 


cross, but the human heroism—or accident?—of the 
cross; . . . not Christ the Lord, but the man 
Jesus who was a child of his time; not God and 
His providence, but evolution and its process without 
an absolute goal—that all this, and such as this, is 
the new turn in the affairs of religion at the tick of 
the clock. 
A writer~in The Moravian says: 

It is every day becoming more apparent that in 
our churches two irreconcilable theological drifts are 
forcing themselves on our attention. The one we 
might call the conservative or positive or evangelical 
position. The other we might call the liberal or 
speculative or higher-critical position. In the final 
analysis of these two positions the former insists on a 
supernatural basis for the Christian religion, while 
the latter denies the supernatural and substitutes a 
purely natural basis. 

The former position has in our day found its 
clearest expression through the Bible Institutes and 
training schools, through evangelistic and missionary 
activity; the latter through Unitarianism, and so-called 
higher criticism in many of our theological seminaries 
and liberal pulpits. Thinking people are discovering, 
even if rather slowly, that these two positions can 
never be reconciled. They have been, are, and always 
will be, fundamentally at war with each other, and we 
might just as well save our precious breath crying 
“Peace! Peace!” when there can be no peace. 

“Throughout all Protestantism,” says a recent 
writer, “especially in the colleges and theological 
training-schools under the guise of ‘higher criti- 
cism’ and ‘liberal Christianity’ there is being waged 
the most determined and far-reaching assault upon 
our holy Christianity that it has ever endured 
since. apostolic times. The Christian religion, 
‘wounded in the house of its friends’ must get 


10 MODERNISM ANOTHER RELIGION 


the victory over these insidious but deadly foes.” 

It would indeed be useless to deny or belittle. 
the radical contrasts between the old Bible faith 
and religious liberalism. So great and fundamen- 
tal are these differences that, if the one is Christ- 
janity, the other must be something else. It has 
been said that liberalism has changed all the doc- 
trines of the old faith as held by Christendom from 
the beginning. The fact is, as pointed out in 
preceding quotations, that liberalism sets aside 
these doctrines and disowns them, Indeed, Chris- 
tianity has more in common with Judaism and 
some other non-Christian religions than with the 
full-fledged modernism. 

About a year ago Professor J. Gresham Ma- 
chen, of Princeton Theological Seminary, pub- 
lished his book Christianity and Liberalism in 
which he definitely points out that modernism is 
another religion, that it is not Christianity and has 
its roots in non-Christian systems of thought. 
More recently a number of leading modernists 
have admitted that Professor Machen’s view is 
correct. The editor of The Christian Century, one 
of the most radically liberalistic journals, says (is- 
sue of January 3, 1924): * 

Christianity according to fundamentalism is one 
religion. Christianity according to modernism is an- 
other religion. There is a clash here as profound 
and as grim as that between Christianity and Con- 
fucianism. Amiable words cannot hide the differences. 
The God of the fundamentalist is one God; the God 
of the modernist in another. The Christ of the 
fundamentalist is one Christ; the Christ of the 
modernist is another. The Bible of fundamentalism 


DIFFERENCES MUST BE RECOGNIZED 11 


is one Bible; the Bible of modernism is another. 
That the issue is clear and that the inherent in- 
compatibility of the two worlds (positions) has passed 
the stage of mutual tolerance (in the same religious 
fold) is a fact concerning which there hardly seems 
room for any one to doubt. 

The editor of the new Mennonite paper, The 
Christian Exponent, says in an editorial article: 

Let us not bring reproach upon ourselves and on 
the Christ whom we profess by quarrelling among our- 
selves, let us be Christians in the real and vital sense 
of that term. Only thus can God bless us, and only 
thus can we do our part in His great plan. 

It is very true that those who are one in Christ, 
one in faith, principle and practice, will bring re- 
proach upon the cause by quarrelling among them- 
selves, Even where such unity does not exist, quar- 
relling (as this term is commonly used) is out of 
place. But this does not mean that the Church 
could extend the hand of Christian fellowship to 
modernism. The point in question is, Can the 
Church close her eyes to the fact that a number of 
modernist leaders have risen among us and some of 
them are taking an attitude of open revolt against 
the Church, as may be shown elsewhere? 

The editor of The Christian Exponent seems 
to be of the opinion that love should overlook the 
existing differences and wink at the defiant attitude 
of some of the modernist leaders. Now this was the 
position which Zwingli and his friends held against 
the Fathers of the Mennonite Church in Switzer- 
land. Their often repeated argument was that the 
insistence of the Mennonite Fathers on separation 
from the worldly state church was a proof that they 


12 “CONTEND EARNESTLY FOR THE FAITH” 


were lacking in love toward that church. The state 
church leaders claimed that love should cause the 
early Mennonites to disregard the existing differ- 
ences of faith and practice. And it is important to 
notice that the points of difference which our Fa- 
thers were asked to compromise and disregard, did 
not concern the fundamentals of the faith. The 
Fathers were not asked to extend the hand of fel- 
lowship to people who differed from them so radi- 
cally as modernism differs from the Mennonite 
faith. Yet they were minded to endure the severest 
persecution rather than confess to peace and unity 
at the expense of loyalty to the Word. And the 
principal writings of Menno Simons and Dirck 
Philips consist in defences of the faith against 
the attacks of their opponents and persecutors. 

In spite of these outstanding pertinent facts 
there are those who warn us that there should be 
no controversy. A number of recent writers have 
expressed the curious opinion that religious con- 
troversy is contrary to the principle of love and 
of nonresistance. They would press the principle 
of peace to such a point that, rather than to 
offend the modernists by defending the faith, they 
are willing to make their peace with modernism 
and let it take possession of the Church. The 
apostles were evidently of different opinion. “Con- 
tend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered 
to the saints,” is their injunction. Our Lord 
said, “Ye shall be witnesses unto me.” Unless 
our faith is of the modern backbone-less variety, 
we will uphold His testimony and defend the 
truth in the face of the modern denial. 


DISSIMULATION 13 


While modernists claim the right to deny and 
attack the faith, they are of the opinion that to take 
a decided position for the faith involves a violation 
of the principle of nonresistance and Christian love. 

Much as the renunciation of the old faith, on 
the part of liberalists, is to be regretted, the most 
offensive feature of religious liberalism is that it 
uses, as a rule, the old Biblical expresisons, and 
claims to be Christian theology—an improvement 
on the old faith ;—all this in the face of the fact 
that some of the liberalists themselves, as we have 
seen, recognize the great chasm which separates 
them from Biblical Christianity. 


Tul 
WHAT IS FUNDAMENTALISM? 


The term fundamentalism is not found in the 
dictionaries. It is a new word which has been 
coined after modernists had come forth with a 
new theology in which the old words were used 
in a new, modernized sense. Modernism was 
spread under an evangelical cloak. In consequence 
the believers of the old type were aroused to take 
a decided position against this insidious foe. They 
defend the fundamentals of the Christian faith 
and hence are called fundamentalists. 

t is true that modernists also, as a rule, claim 
to accept the fundamentals, yet they are not and 
do not desire to be regarded as fundamentalists. 
The fact is that the real meaning of the term 
fundamentalism is the rejection of modernism. 
Fundamentalism is anti-modernism. | 

Various modernists have asserted that fun- 
damentalism is identical with premillennarianism. 
But while fundamentalism teaches the literal, per- 
sonal, visible second coming of Christ, the opinion 
that fundamentalists agree in a belief in a literal 
millennium is erroneous. This was made clear 
in an editorial article published in a recent number 
of one of the leading fundamentalist organs, The 
Sunday School Times. The great majority of the 
Lutheran Church as well as large sections of the 
Presbyterian Church are anti-modernist as well as 
anti-millenial. Professor J. Gresham Machen, of 
Princeton Theological Seminary, as a representa- 


FUNDAMENTALISM NOT MILLENNIALISM 15 


tive of fundamentalism, is second to no other 
writer. His book Christianity and Liberalism is in 
some respects the best defence of fundamentalism. 
Professor Machen does not believe in a literal mil- 
lennium. He says concerning the claim that fun- 
damentalism is premillennialism: 

It is highly misleading when modern liberals 
represent the present issue in the Church, both in the 
mission field and at home, as being an issue between 
premillennialism and the opposite view. It is really 
an issue between Christianity, whether premillennial 
or not, on the one side, and a naturalistic negation of 
all Christianity on the other. (Page 49.) 

The editor of The Christian Exponent, in an 
article on Nonresistance and Fundamentalism, ac- 
cuses the conservatives of the Mennonite Church 
of “throwing themselves unreservedly” with the 
fundamentalists. He says: 

One wonders sometimes how it is possible for so 
many people who claim to be believers in the whole 
Gospel and take literally the teachings of Christ, to 
throw themselves so whole-heartedly and unreservedly 
with a group which so utterly repudiates this principle 
of nonresistance as does the militant group which 
styles itself “Fundamentalists.” 


The question regarding the attitude of the 
fundamentalists toward nonresistance will be treat- 
ed in another place. (See page 65). Speaking 
of those “who claim to be believers in the whole 
gospel,” the editor of The Christian Exponent is 
evidently referring to the conservative Menno- 
nites. But the claim that we are throwing our- 
selves “whole-heartedly and unreservedly” with 
any fundamentalists of other churches is not born 
out by the facts. The fact that fundamentalists 


16 AN UNFOUNDED CHARGE 


—anti-modernists—are found in various churches 
makes it impossible to agree with them all on 


every point. The case is somewhat similar to the. 


temperance question as it concerns us. We are 
opposed to the liquor traffic, yet the temperance 
people are a motley crowd and we never thought 
of throwing ourselves unreservedly with them. 
Now the denial of the Christian fundamentals 
is a greater menace to the Christian cause and 
to the nation than the liquor traffic. And then, 
prohibition savors of politics, it is in a measure a 
political movement while fundamentalism is noth- 
ing of the kind. We do not throw ourselves un- 
reservedly with the anti-modernists of other 
churches, but we rejoice because they are fighting 
modern unbelief. We find ourselves fighting the 


same enemy and for this we shall not apologize, — 


neither have we deserved the censure which the 
editor of The Christian Exponent sees fit to give 
us. | 
The question is pertinent: Have not liberal 
Mennonites “thrown themselves” to a greater 
extent with modernists than conservative Menno- 
nites with fundamentalists of other churches? 
Would not the editor of The Christian Exponent 
have more cause, for example, to censure the 
Mennonite institution in Ohio which called out- 
spoken modernists such as Professor Rall, of 
Fvanston, Ill., and Professor Richards, of Lan- 
caster, Pa., to give courses of lectures in a Short 
Bible Term, than to make the groundless assertion 
that we throw ourselves unreservedly with any 
fundamentalists of other churches? 


| RelA 


ARE A PERSON’S RELIGIOUS VIEWS 
OF MINOR IMPORTANCE? 


Several months ago an American Mennonite 
minister published an article in a Mennonite 
periodical asserting that “our people are not in 
danger of higher criticism.” A greater menace to 
the Mennonite Church than the higher critics, 
this writer says further, are. the “critics” who 
believe that among American Mennonites there 
are those. who have yielded to modernist in- 
fluences. 

The same writer, referring to several Menno- 
nite educators who were reputed to entertain 
modernist views, says: 

Yet we who had not become prejudiced have 
learned to love every one of these leaders. 

There is not a word as to their attitude as 
concerns the fundamentals of the Christian faith. 
The inference is that, since the said writer found 
them to be of an agreeable, gentleman-like dis- 
position, he holds that their orthodoxy must not 
be questioned. 

Touching the same question, President S. K. 
Mosiman, of Bluffton (Mennonite) College, wrote 
in regard to the needed qualifications for teachers 
in this institution: 
| pli judging a man’s value to the College you 
_ must depend on other factors than the question and 

answer method. Of course, I have questioned men as 
to their religious views, but I always consider that of 


i8 DOCTRINE OF PRIMARY IMPORTANCE 


minor importance in estimating a man’s character.” 
(Protocol of the Thirty-first Session of the Western. 
District Conference, page 975). 

Yet it is a fact not to be denied that there 
are modernists and radical unbelievers who are 
of an agreeable disposition and possess what is 
generally spoken of as an unobjectionable moral 
character. 


One of the most attractive characters the 
present writer has met was a young Unitarian 
minister. While listening to one of his discourses 
in which he questioned every fundamental of the 
faith, including the immortality of the soul, and 
asserted that morality was sufficient to save any 
man, my heart burned within me in pity seeing 
that he squandered his God-given talents for the 
cause of modernism. He had been led astray and 
was leading others in the wrong way though, 
apparently, he believed that he was right. I have 
yet somewhere a letter from him in which he 
defends his views. Again, the greatest poet living, 
whose gentleman-like attainments and agreeable 
Gisposition cannot be questioned, is Tagore, of 
India, a heathen who is an outspoken opponent of 
the Christian faith. They say that even Robert 
G. Ingersoll possessed ar attractive personality. 


One could only wish that the argument of the 
first mentioned writer were convincing and his 
assertion as regards the freedom of the Menno- 
nites of America from liberalism correct. There 


is conclusive evidence that the contrary is. the 
case. 


Fay, 
THE GREATEST TRAGEDY 


It is sad to see in our day many ministers and 
educators busily engaged in spreading modernism, 
and what is particularly tragical is the fact that 
these men, at least some of them, think that they 
are doing God a service. They have exposed them- 
selves to liberalistic influences to the extent that 
they have been led astray. They actually seem to 
believe that modernism is superior to the old Bible 
faith. How sad that a man may be sincere and 
yet be in serious error; that his motives may be 
good, and yet his teaching and influence detri- 
mental to the Christian cause. 

Yet it is a well-known fact that modernists, as 
a rule, are inclined to conceal their real position. 
They sail under false colors when they hide their 
liberalism under the language of orthodoxy; when 
they attempt to impress the Church that, regarding 
the fundamentals of the faith, they take an ortho- 
dox position which in reality they do not hold. 
Now there is where sincerity ceases. It is impos- 
sible to believe in the honesty and sincerity of 
men who, when speaking about the most vital 
questions, do not mean what they say nor say what 
they mean. If it were a fact that they believe 
liberalism to be superior to orthodoxy and that 
their new faith is worth while, they would not 
desire to be taken for orthodox Christians, The 
fact is that such a lack of common honesty, as 
their time-serving policy indicates, must be looked 


20 MORAL PERVERSION 


upon as evidence of a break-down of moral integ- 
rity in consequence of the denial of the old Bible 


faith. 

Zion’s Advocate said a few years ago: 

When men surrender their faith in the super- 
natural and in the fundamental doctrines of the Christ- 
ian Church, and can no longer preach and teach them, 
why do they not, like honorable gentlemen, resign the 
responsibilities which they have accepted, and go out 
and establish a platform of their own? If they have 
the truth, why do they not show their confidence in 
their teachings by organizing their own institutions 
instead of continuing to receive their support from 
those whose beliefs they have solemnly promised to 
espouse? I think that common honor and honesty 
wold lead them to such a step. 

A striking evidence of an unsound moral at- 
titude is found in the fact that some of the modern- 
ized seminaries not only practice counterfeiting 
and “hedging” but they do so against the will of 
the churches who own and support the seminaries. 
Without scruple, as it seems, the modernists, 
though they admit that their teaching differs rad- 
ically from the old faith, are using money designed 
to the maintenance and propagation of the primi- 
tive Bible faith. Mission money given by conse- 
crated Christians for the propagation of the Gospel 
is used by liberalists for the purpose of moderniz- 
ing the Christian converts in heathen lands. 

A most discouraging “sign of our time” is the 
prevalence of the practice of “hedging” among 
theological writers and professors, Men of high 
position in the church are playing fast and loose 


with words, they find it in their conscience to 


THEOLOGICAL HEDGING 21 


make a statement of their faith with mental re- 
servations; they are trifling with the Christian 
religion and morality. It is all so different from 


the transparent candor with which the believers 


of all ages have stated their faith; it is even dif- 
ferent from the method of scientists who would 
deem it beneath: their moral dignity to stoop to 
such more than questionable practices. In mod- 
ern theology “hedging” and camouflage has been. 
developed into a fine art. 

The writer has in mind a book on prayer 
whose author is a pronounced liheralist, Thovoh 
he does not believe in a God who answers prayer, 
but holds that the effect of prayer is entirely sub- 
jective, he has “hedged” to such extent and with 
such success that believing Christians have read 
his book, never suspecting that the author speaks 
of prayer in an entirely new sense and that the 
book is quite acceptable to radical liberalists. 
Many theological books are published in our day 
which the trained reader will recognize as unortho- 
dox, but their authors are given to the practice of 
“hedging.” They do not commit themselves. They 
may speak of such fundamental doctrines as the 
deity of Christ, in Incarnation, Atonement, the in- 
spiration of Scripture. The reader is fully aware 
that they do not defend orthodoxy but is left in the 
dark regarding the question, what sort of “doxy” 
they represent, or what they mean when they treat 
of the said doctrines. None other than Dean Fenn, 
of Harvard University, says that readers of current 
theological literature must often wish that every 
writer were obliged to furnish a vocabulary, ex- 


22 STUDIED MODERNIST INDEFINITENESS 


plaining the meaning of terms which he uses. He 
adds that theological writers can hardly expect a 
‘sympathetic hearing from thoughtful men unless 
they are willing to let them know what they are 
‘talking about. The supreme need of modern liber- 
alism, Dean Fenn says further, is for definite and 
precise thinking and direct, plain speaking, - 


The unvarnished fact is that a large number of 
theological books has been published concerning 
which it must be said, that it is impossible for 
the readers to know what the authors are talking 
about. And those for whom these unreal, non- 
committal books were written are men and women 
who, in their own opinion, are too far advanced in 
mental development to accept the doctrines of the 
Christian faith. Could there be ore convincing 
proof of the superficiality and unworthiness of 
modern liberalistic thought. Yet it is to the very 
characteristic of hedging that some of the most 
widely used theological books owe their popularity. 
A British reviewer of the Theology by William 
Newton Clarke says: “In America the fashion 
seems to be to defend a foregone conclusion by 
rhetoric. This makes the reviewing of the book 
before us a peculiarly difficult task. It contains a 
great deal of what is known as ‘hedging,’ ” 


From the viewpoint of general morality and 
common honesty, theological hedging and camou- 
flage must be unconditionally condemned. Such 
practices are unworthy of persons of serious pur- 
pose. A man writing a book on theology who is 
unwilling to commit himself and to let his readers 





DECEIVING THE UNWARY 23 


know what he is talking about is clearly a double- 
minded man — a sorry figure morally. 

A representative of the Ethical Culture move- 
ment, H. J. Bridges, of Chicago, writes: 


The question of intellectual honesty in church and 
pulpit has hitherto been utterly ignored by the mass 
of the public. A distinguished teacher in the Divinity 
School of a great university recently gave one of the 
cleverest exhibitions of the art of riding two horses 
at once that I ever witnessed. At a conference of 
liberals he expressed his own views about God, Christ, 
the Bible, and the Church, in language of masterly 
vagueness and ambignity. 

There is nothing more repellant than the preacher 
who privately admits that he does not believe what 
he publicly utters. It is simply a question of common 
honesty and truthfulness in the pulpit. Nothing 
could conceivably be more demoralizing than this 
game of sanctified make-believe. None of the things 
that preachers generally denounce, and not all of 
them together are so profoundly corrupting, so ruinous 
to the very principles and standards of moral integ- 
rity as that which must be plainly called religious 
lying—preaching doctrine that the preacher himself 
thinks false. 


This is what the editor of the Boston Herald 
says in a recent issue about the dishonest attitude 
of modernists in general: 

From the beginning the overwhelming majority of 
liberals in the orthodox churches have dodged the 
issues—have hedged, evaded, qualified and compromised. 
They have comforted their congregations with as- 
surances that nothing was really happening in the 
world of religious thought, and that they need not 
therefore be disturbed. Black they have blithely called 
white, and error truth. For one man in the liberal 
camp who has the courage of his conviction, there 


24 


COMMON HONESTY NEEDED 


are a thousand, like Harry Emerson Fosdick, who 
shift and shuffle on every question. Now come the 
fundamentalists to demand a “show-down.” They 
make their position clear and they ask that their 


opponents do as much! 


A prominent Unitarian writer, Edmund H, 


Reeman, says: 


If the modernist means anything, he means, we 
take it, that he does not accept the Bible as the in- 
fallible and authoritative Word of God. He means 
that his God and the God of the fundamentalist are 
as different as chalk and cheese. He means that he 
does not believe that Jesus of Nazareth was born of a 
virgin, nor that his dead body was raised from a 
Palestinian tomb, nor that this same Christ shall ever 
come again in triumph from the cloud. 

Why, then, does he not say so in terms as unequi- 
vocal, as simple, and as straightforward as the fun- 
damentalist uses? Why does he not openly and 
frankly state that if fundamentalism is true Christ- 
tianity then he is not a Christian and has no use for 
Christianity? 

The greatest calamity is to see congregations. 


and churches, as it were, handing the key to the 
citadel over to modernist leaders without knowing 
what they are doing. A number of examples could 
be given where churches failed to see the issue 
clearly and were deceived by the smooth, orthodox 
sounding words and suave attitude of modernists,. 
until the latter have intrenched themselves in the 
church in such a degree that it seems impossible. 
to remove them. Among the instances of this kind 
there is one of the most prominent nonresistant 
denominations in America. 





V 
THE INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES 


In No, 3 of The Christian Exponent, a Menno- 
nite writer (O. R. L.) confesses belief in the Deity 
of Christ and the inspiration of the Scriptures, but 
adds that “these indisputable verities have a thous- 
and and one meanings for as many individuals.” 
This writer does not believe in the verbal inspira- 
tion of the Scriptures. On the same question 
President S. K. Mosiman expresses himself in a 
_ similar way. He says the doctrine of the verbal 
inspiration of Scripture is “a combination of hea- 
then philosophy and post-reformation theologies ” 
(Protocol of the 3lst Session of the Western Dis- 
trict Conference, 1922, p. 977). In the same place 
the same writer confesses that he accepts the 
Scriptures as the Word of God. Clearly he follows 
the modernist usa°e of using an old orthodox 
expression in a liberalistic, unreal sense. 

The doctrine of the plenary or verbal inspira- 
tion of the Scriptures is taught in the Bible and is 
the only doctrine of Biblical inspiration that is con- 
sistent with the claims and contents of the Bible 
message. Its practical meaning is that the Bible 
is infallible. This doctrine must not be con- 
founded with the mechanical or dictation theory 
which implies the suppression of the human ele- 
ment altogether. Though mechanical inspiration is 
not claimed for the Scriptures, it is necessary to 
emphasize the fact that, whether the holy writers 
committed to writing a direct message from God 
(as did in many instances Moses and the pro- 


26 SCRIPTURE INERRANT 


phets), or whether they stated the truth as they, 
by divine illumination, saw it, or recorded what 
they themselves had witnessed, or other facts of 
history, they were in every instance moved by the 
Holy Ghost to such extent that their writings are 
not subject to error. This implies the principle 
of verbal inspiration. The Holy Spirit guided 
them in the choice of words to the end that the 
truth was expressed and error avoided. The 
original manuscripts of the Scriptures were in this 
sense verbally inspired. 


Inspiration, then, must be distinguished from 
illumination, True, the holy writers were enlight- 
ened by the Holy Spirit, but illumination alone 
would not have enabled them to write the infallible 
Word of God. Neither can verbal inspiration be 
sufficiently accounted for on the ground that the 
writers were holy men. Many other Christian 
writers were true saints of the Lord. Again, it is 
immaterial whether all the holy writers knew at 
the time of their writing that the Holy Spirit was 
guiding them to the extent that they wrote iner- 
rantly. Nor can it be supposed that these writers 
had the ability to write infallibly at all times. All 
this means that the holy writers were, while they 
wrote the Scriptures, in a very special sense the 
tools of the Holy Spirit. The Bible is the result 
of the supernatural working of God. It is the 
Word of God. The old proof-text method of using 
Scripture is the method of Christ and the apostles. 
it is the only method consistent with Scripture 
teaching as to the nature of the Scriptures. 


AN INFALLIBLE REVELATION 27 


In recent times the opinion has been ad- 
vanced that the inspiration of Scripture has to do 
merely with the thought of Scripture. It is sup- 
posed that the writers of the books of the Bible 
wrote the thoughts, or the messages, that were 
given them of God but were not under the special 
guidance of God, Yet unless these writers were 
led by God in the choice of their words to the 
extent that they wrote inerrantly, we should have 
in Scripture not the infallible revelation of God 
but a mere record of revelation — a record which 
would be human and therefore imperfect in char- 
acter. “If inspiration does not render the holy 
Scriptures infallible, their nature is no longer di- 
vine but human,” says Professor George Johnson. 


There are at the present time theologians 
who would shift the authority from the infallible 
Bible to the infallible Christ. They are of the 
opinion that it matters little whether or no the 
Bible is inerrant so long as we have Christ and 
His word to build upon, just as we have Plato 
or other great men of antiquity. But the words 
of Plato can not be compared with Christ’s 
words on point of importance. Plato did not 
bring to men a supernatural revelation; his writ- 
ings must be judged entirely by human standards. 
Christ, on the other hand, taught truths that come 
to us as divine revelation. Some of these truths 
cannot be verified by experience or human know- 
iedge. The fact that Christ was infallible would 
not give us infallible divine authority if we had 
not the inerrant statement or record of His words 


28 NOT A MERE HUMAN RECORD 


and acts. What would Christ’s infallibility benefit 
us if the record which we have of Him be unreli- 
able? It is inconceivable—is it not?—that God 
would accomplish the great work of the redemption 
of mankind and reveal to fallen man the true way 
of salvation, and then leave us with a fallible 
account of it all—an unreliable record such as 
modernists believe the Scriptures to be. 


Modernists tell us, as already intimated, that 
of the contents of Scripture only that which has to 
do directly with the religious life of man was 
given of God to the Biblical writers. This means 
that inspiration, even in this loose sense, would not 
apply to Scripture narration of historical events 
and hence not to the record of miracles, If this 
were the correct view you might believe in the 
inspiration of Scripture and yet question the 
miracles. They who hold such views deny the 
vital importance of Scripture narration. They 
ignore the fact that the truth of Christianity de- 
pends on certain historical facts, such as the life, 
death, and resurrection of Christ. Nevertheless 
many of those who take such an attitude would 
retain some of the moral and religious teaching 
of the Bible. 


Again if liberalistic theologians are asked how 
they suppose that God revealed religious thoughts 
to the holy writers, they answer, as a rule, that 
these thoughts name to them through their reli- 
gious experience. The above mentioned writer (O. 
R. L.) says in the same article published in The 
Christian Exponent that individual experience 


A MODERNIST VIEW OF INSPIRATION 29 


(instead of divine inspiration) is the source of the 
contents of the Scriptures. 


Now the term “religious experience” is an 
impressive one. But, as may be pointed out 
elsewhere, “religious experience” has been de- 
prived of all real meaning by the representatives 
of liberalism. In the last analysis they hold that 
the Bible is merely “the outgrowth of men’s 
thinking,” just as all other religious books. These 
modernistic theologians see in Scripture simply 
“man’s enlarging thought and discovery of God, 
not God’s progressive revelation of Himself to 
nan.” Nevertheless they profess to believe in the 
inspiration of Scripture. Now such a view of 
inspiration cannot be taken seriously; it is a 
mere make-believe. Modern theology denies the 
personality of the Holy Spirit. Professor H. C. 
Ackerman, an outspoken liberalist, asserts that 
the spirit that is active in religious inspiration is 
merely “a stirring interest” on the part of man 
which leads to the discovery of religious truth. 
In other words inspiration is not the work of the 
divine Spirit but of the spirit of man. It is readily 
seen that this doctrine of inspiration is mere word- 
jugglery. 

The leading modern critics, then, do not dis- 
tinguish between divine inspiration, in the sense 
in which this term is used when we speak of the 
inspiration of Scripture, and the various other 
uses of the word inspiration. They tell us that 
the Scriptures are inspired in a similar sense as 
some poem or some new idea may prove inspiring 


30 MODERNIST REJECTION OF SCRIPTURE 


to us, In their opinion Shakespeare and Goethe 
were inspired as well as the Biblical writers. Pro- 
fessor Edward Scribner Ames, of the University of 
Chicago, for example, mentions quite a number of 
writers: Tennyson and Whittier and Bryant and 
Lowell and Phillips Brooks and Shakespeare and 
Maeterlinck and Kepler and Darwin and John 
Locke and William James who, in his view, should 
be included in the sacred canon of Scripture. 

“Modern religious thinking,” says Gerald Bir- 
ney Smith, “is learning to draw its inspiration 
from the world in which we live.” 


Vi 
THE AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURE 


William Newton Clarke, the well-known ad- 
vocate of modernism, wrote in his work on theo- 
logy: “The authority of the Scriptures is the 
authority of the truth that they convey.” In an 
address given at the session of the All-Mennonite 
Convention held in 1919 at Bluffton, Ohio, J. E. 
Hartzler, president of Witmarsum (Mennonite) 
Theological Seminary (formerly president of Go- 
shen College) said: 

Neither can we say that ultimate authority lies 
in the mere letter of the Bible. We have too long 
contented ourselves with the argument, “Because the 
Bible says so.” The fact is that the Bible says so 
and reports things because they are true. 

In other words, the writer of these sentences 
claims that he believes in the truths contained in 
the Bible, but not because the Bible says so. A- 
gain, he says, as we may directly see, that no 
religious doctrine (though taught in Scripture) is 
of value or fundamental which cannot be verified 
by human experience. 

Here is a strange piece of modernist reason- 
ing. The fact is that if we let go of the fact 
that things are true because the Bible says so, 
we shall find ourselves at sea regarding the most 
essential doctrines of the faith. The only con- 
clusive proof which we have for the fundamental 
Christian doctrines, is that they are taught in 
Scripture. They are true because God’s Word says 
so. Unless we are willing to accept them on the 


32 DENIAL OF SCRIPTURE AUTHORITY 


authority of the Scriptures, we shall be in the dark 
concerning the greatest questions regarding our 
relation and duty to God and our destiny. 

This writer says further in the same address: 

We have too long satisfied ourselves on inefficient 
tests of truth and validity. When we seek valid 
tests for fundamental truths, we must seek higher 
authority than personal opinions, than formal creeds 
of the past, and we must go farther back than the 
mere letter of the Bible itself. The source of truth 
is in the eternal hills of God. 

Here is dogmatic teaching forsooth. Can some 
one explain what are the eternal hills of God, and 
how we may draw truth from that source? If the 
Scriptures are God’s Word, there cannot be a 
higher authority than the Bible. 

Again this writer, in the same address, sub- 
stitutes experience for the authority of Scripture. 


He says: ; 

No religious doctrine is of value, or fundamental, 
which cannot be verified by human experience; that. 
is, which cannot become assimilated and united with 
the spiritual system of man himself. A doctrine is 
fundamental only when it is capable of experience in 
the lives of individual men. No doctrine exists for 
its own sake. It exists for the sake of man; and to 
bless man it must be capable of becoming a part of 
his spiritual being, the same as food does in the 
natural body. We have too long believed certain 
abstract statements for the sake of the statements them- 
selves, rather than for the sake of man. We have been 
too long swallowing theological indigestives. 

The fact is that some of the most fundamental 
doctrines of the Christian faith cannot be tested 
or established by human experience; they must 


be accepted on the authority of the Word. We 


BIBLE THE FOUNDATION OF CHURCH — 33 


have believed them because they are revealed in 
God’s Word, since disbelieving His Word, is in the 
language of the apostle John, “making Him a 
liar.” 


And then there is the question of the relation- 
ship between Christian: experience and the ordin- 
ances. While there is such a relationship, since 
true Christian experience causes a desire to obe- 
dience, yet it is difficult to see how the ordinances 
could be established on experience alone. It is 
not claimed that they cleanse from sin and renew 
the heart. The Quakers, therefore, do not keep 
the ordinances. Nevertheless they observe cer- 
tain regulations regarding dress and life in general, 
though they do not believe that these things will 
change the heart. The fact remains that it is not 
clear how the ordinances and church regulations 
could be maintained on no other ground than ex- 
perience. 


Dr. Robert Forman Horton, a conservative 
Isritish theologian, wrote: 


The real difficulty of our time, when we come to 
probe it, is the dethronement of the Bible from its 
position of unquestioned authority. From the earliest 
period of Christianity, even in the writings of the 
earliest Fathers, the sacred Scriptures were held to be 
the standard and the test of Christian truth: nothing 
was to be taught as essential except what was con- 
tained in them or could be proven by them; and up to 
the middle of the last century the imposing fortress 
of the Book remained practically unquestioned and 
certainly unbreached. No one within the borders of 
the Church hesitated to regard the Bible as effect- 
ively infallible. A quotation from any part of it 


34 


BIBLE THE FOUNDATION 


carried unquestionable weight, and decisions drawn from 
its decretals were the settlement of all strife—Liberal 
Protestants have lost their Bible, and in losing tt 
have lost their religion. How can they shelter in a 
building which is demolished or which is ever hidden 
by the scaffolding about it, necessary for perpetual 
repairs? 
Charles Haddon Spurgeon has said: 


The turning point of the battle between those who 
hold “the faith once delivered to the saints” and their 
opponents, lies in the true and real inspiration of the 
Holy Scriptures. This is the Thermopylae of Christ- 
endom. If we have in the Word of God no infallible 
standard of truth, we are at sea without a compass, 
and no danger from rough weather without can be 
equal to this loss within. “If the foundations be 
removed, what can the righteous do?” And this is a 
foundation loss of the worst kind. 

3 


“Let us not deceive ourselves,” says Professor 


John Gresham Machen, of Princeton Theological 
Seminary, “the Bible is at the foundation of the 
church. Undermine that foundation, and the 
church will fall. It will fall and great will be 
the fall of it.” 


Vial 
iii oil YO be Cit RTS Fe 


In another place reference has been made to 
a recent writer in The .Christian Exponent who 
says that such doctrines as the Deity of Christ 
“necessarily have a thousand and one meanings for 
as many different individuals.” Now this is the 
language of modernism. The said statement is true 
in regard to those who reject the supernatural 
birth and true Deity of Christ. To the believer 
in God’s Word, the Deity of Christ has only 
cne meaning. It means that Christ had the divine 
nature in a very particular sense, being superna- 
turally born and coming to ity world from another 
realm. 

Among the “thousand and one meanings” that 
liberalism ascribes to the Deity of Christ, the most 
widely accepted view, perhaps, is the one defended 
in a tract published by the Unitarians. The title 
of this tract is Divine Because Human. They hold 
that God is not what Scripture says He is, but is 
“the collective mind of mankind.” Therefore all 
that is human is divine, divinity is humanity and 
the Deity of Christ means simply that He is 
human. But why speak of Deity at all if it has 
no real meaning? 

In the address given at a session of the All- 
‘Mennonite Convention mentioned ADOVE, Fs en tee 
Hartzler said: 


When Jesus came He spoke of God as “Father.” 
Jesus called God His Father. The term implies 


36 A DOCTRINAL QUESTION 


moral not biological relationship. [The term biolo- 
‘gical means pertaining to the origin of life]. Jesus 
recognizes God as the Father of mankind. 

Yet the Scriptures teach distinctly Christ’s 
Sonship in a biological and not merely moral 
sense. | 

Under the title “What Thnk ye of Christ?” 
Lester Hostetler has a sermon in No. 5 of The 
Christian Exponent. The article is an eulogy of 
Christ, yet the writer makes the statement that he 
does not consider this a theological (or doctrinal) 
question. In fact he never mentions the superna- 
tural birth of Christ. This is singular indeed in 
view of the fact that the supernatural birth of 
Christ is one of the great storm centers around 
which the conflict between the Christian faith and 
modernism is waged. To preach on the subject 
What Thirk ye of Christ? and never mention this 
point is to evade the issue. To say that this is not 
a theological question is to speak from the view- 
point of modernism. 

Such language as is found in this article is 
often used by modernists. They say that we see 
God in Jesus, yet they hold that we see God in all 
men, but in Jesus in a special sense because He 
was a religious genius. They confess that we 
have in Jesus a dynamic for living and that men 
are changed through the presence of Christ, and 
they have other beautiful words on the same strain, 
and yet they deny the true Deity of Christ. As a 
rule they have much to say of the Cross and yet 
they do not accept the Scriptural doctrine of the 
Atonement. Some have even confessed that He 
is risen and by this expression meant simply that, 


DENIAL OF RESURRECTION 37 


since man is immortal, Jesus continued to live 
when He died physically. A conspicuous example 
of such camouflage is that of Harry Emerson Fos- 
dick, who in a recent statement of his faith (made 
because his orthodoxy was questioned), asserts his 
pelief in “the resurrected life of Jesus,” while in 
fact he denies that Jesus’ body came forth from 
the grave. 

While the writer of the article What Think 


ye of Christ? was a student in Union Theological 
Seminary (New York) the present writer in a 


letter to him gave him a word of caution, since 
it was generally known that this institution is 
notorious for its bold denial of the fundamentals of 
the faith. His reply was that he was of age and 
could guard against wrong teachings. Later there 
was evidence that he accepted the Union Seminary 
position in regard to certain doctrines. 

Dr. K. C. Anderson, of Dundee, Scotland, 
says well concerning the importance of the miracu- 
lous birth of Christ: 


Christianity from the beginning has been conceived 
as a redemptive plan, the good news of a divine being 
coming down from heaven to rescue fallen man, the 
Christ or Savior not being a member of the fallen 
race, but apart from it and superior to it. To make 
the Christ or Savior a member of the race, no matter 
how specially endowed with moral and spiritual quali- 
ties, is to alter the whole conception and to tear out 
the heart of the evangelic story. The Christian church 
has never yet consented to put its Christ into the 
same category as the prophets of the Old Testament 
or the philosophers of Greece, but this is just what 
will have to be done if the Jesus of the critics is to be 
accepted as the Christ. 


38 


DESTRUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY 


The triumph of liberalism is really a defeat, for it 
means the destruction of Christianity as Christianity 
has been known in all ages of history. — If Jesus was 
a man as Socrates, Alexander, Isaiah, and Jeremiah 
were men, then the whole Christian world has been 
under a delusion. The discovery that Jesus was a 
man merely as those named were men, would be 
regarded as destructive to Christianity just as would 
be the discovery that Jesus never lived at all. It 
would be the destruction of Christianity as Chris- 
tianity has been understood by the great saints and 
theologians of the past. 


Vill 


SALVATION AND CHRISTIAN 
EXPERIENCE 





The Gospel of salvation through the blood 
| of Christ is to unregenérate, worldly-minded hu- 

manity as, well as to an apostate church, a foolish, 
_ despisable thing. Modernists have referred to it 
as “pestilential” teaching, Not a few well-known 
liberalistic theologians have only scoffing and ridi- 
cule for it. It is a stumbling block to the self- 
sufficient, self-righteous carnal modern mind. It 
is unpopular among those who would tune their 
faith to the spirit of the age. “For the preaching 
of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; 
but unto us who are saved tt is the power of God. 
—We preach Christ crucified unto the Jews a 
stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness ; 
but unto them which are called, both Jews and 
Greeks, Christ the power and wisdom of God.” 
(1 Cor. 1:18, 23, 24). 

Is it not an appalling fact that there are in 
our day men, supposed to be ministers of the 
Gospel, who openly declare that the crucified 
Christ, as the Apostles preached Him — or, in 
cther words, the message of salvation through the 
Blood — is to them as well as to their congrega- 
tions a stumbling block and an offense? But to 
us who are saved, says the apostle, He is “the 
power of God and the wisdom of God.” Now 
here is clear evidence of the fundamental con- 
trast between the non-believer and the believer. 


40 THE ATONEMENT 


What the one considers foolishness, the other finds 
to be the power of God. To him who has ac- 
cepted the Gospel message and is experiencing its 
power in his own life there is nothing so vital, 
nothing so satisfying, nothing to make his heart 
burn within him, as the sweet story of the Gospel 
the message that Christ gave His life for us, “the 
just for the unjust that He might bring us to 
God” (I Pet. 3:18),..On the other hand, the 
preaching of a modernized gospel is indeed an 
offence. You cannot blame those who say they 
find it an uninteresting, lifeless thing. It is at 
best a form of Gospel minus the power thereof. 

It is interesting to notice, in this connection, 
that modernism rejects also the Biblical doctrine 
of the Atonement as immoral. It is immoral, they 
say, that one person should be sentenced to bear 
another’s sins. That this is said in connection with 
the Atonement is due to a strange perversion of 
this Bible doctrine. The fact is that no one was 
compelled to suffer for another’s sin. God Him- 
self became man in order that He might, of His 
own free will, bear the sin of the world. Christ 
is God. He became man and acted in accordance 
with the Father’s will when He became the sin- 
bearer of the world. The Father, according to 
the eternal plan of love “laid upon Him the ini- 
quity of us all,” but He did so in accordance with 
the Son’s own free will and plan. And mark well, 
the purpose of it all was to do a wonderful work 
of grace for those who accept the great sacrifice, 
namely to put away their. sin and effect in them 
a miraculous change of heart, that henceforth they 


DIVINE FATHERHOOD 41 


will not serve sin. To say that this greatest of all 
divine plans and works is of an immoral character, 
is to take what for want of a more appropriate 
name, may be fitly called a satanic view of the 
Atonement. 

In a word, the world and the apostate church 
are openly despising the old Bible faith. And 
those who stand loyally for the Christian faith 
will not fare better at their hands than did Christ 
and the apostles at the hands of the high priests 
and scribes. The days are again upon us when to 
bear “the reproach of Christ” means something 
similar as it did in the primitive Christian period. 

Modern theology makes much of the father- 
hood of God. For God’s fatherhood in the Scrip- 
tural sense it has substituted a new doctrine which 
exalts God’s love at the expense of His righteous- 
ness and holiness. The modern view of God’s fa- 
therhood leaves out of consideration the fact that, 
unless God is truth and holiness as well as love, 
He cannot be love in any real sense. This new 
doctrine ignores “the sinfulness of sin.” It stands 
for an indulgent but soft and weak fatherhood of 
God; too weak to deal appropriately with sin; too 
sentimental to insist on the sinner taking the only 
way of salvation from sin. But all the glib modern 
talk of God’s love, which ignores the Scripture 
teaching of sin and salvation, is nothing beyond a 
sickly sentimentalism which has never saved a soul 
nor ever will, 

Hand in hand, with the rejection of the 
thought of Christ as the Redeemer goes the mod- 
ern doctrine of salvation by character. This doc- 


42 SALVATION BY CHARACTER 


trine means that a good moral character, such as 
respectable people are supposed to have, is suf- 
ficient for salvation. It is a doctrine for those who 
feel that their own righteousness fills all require- 
ments, Religious liberalism has no message for 
the sinner, be he respectable or not, who realizes 
that he is lost. The Gospel message, on the other 
hand, is for him who is “down and out” as well 
as for the one of respectable character, provided) 
that they realize their need of salvation. The offer 
is to all. The vilest of sinners may come and 
accept it by believing that Christ, his substitute, 
died for him and shed His blood for his sin. The 
guilt and stain of sin is cancelled and the new | 
nature implanted in him. 

The Bible comes to you with a message. The 
message, if true, is of incomparable value. You 
are called upon tto experience the truth of its mes-_ 
sage. It consists of truths, or doctrines, Sones 
ing God and His nature, man and his condition, 
the way of salvation, etc. You are bidden to be- 
lieve and fully accept the message. There are, 
excellent reasons for believing that the message 
is true. The most convincing reason, perhaps, i is 
that Christianity will do for you what it claims dl 
do. If you are conscious of personal sin and of an” 
unsatisfactory relation to God, Christianity offers a_ 
way for fully removing the burden of sin and 
guilt and giving you a deep consciousness of a 
vital relationship to God, the relation of a child to 
his loving father. The Christian message points’ 
out a way to make you abound in all the fruits of 
the Spirit. You will be enabled to lead a life” 





FAILURE OF MODERNISM 43 


jof victory over sin and over the adverse condi- 
itions and failures of life. When the real tests 
come which prove the modern conceptions of God 
and of religion to be utterly inadequate, Christian- 
ity will make you “more than conqueror.” It will 
turn your defeats into victories. It will make 
you the stronger spiritually and morally for ad- 
verse experiences. 

True Christian experience will also cure you 
of the worldly-wise idea that the endeavor to 
‘improve social conditions is the essence of Chris- 
tianity and is of greater importance than main- 
taining the proper personal relationship to God and 





bringing others into such relationship. Unless 
your Christain faith is mere show and pretence, 
you will clearly see that it is the greatest treasure 
which you possess. You would willingly give 
your earthly possessions and social advantages 
for your faith. You are convinced that you can 
render no greater service to your fellow-man than 
‘to get him to accept the Christian message. 
Christian experience, to be worthy of the 
name, presupposes Christian faith. Such exper- 
ience is excluded where the fundamentals of the 
faith are treated with indifference or denied. Dis- 
counting the truth of the Gospel makes Christian 
experience impossible. Deny the Deity of Christ 
and the Atonement and you destroy the possibility 
of true Christian experience. Again, accept the 
Gospel message unreservedly and you will exper- 
ience a great change of mind and heart. If your 
faith is steadfast, the reality of this change will 
become more and more clear to you. The change 


44 CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 


is the result of personal faith in Jesus Christ — 
not of following a natural impulse but of giving 
heed to the prompting of the Holy Spirit. It is 
not mere development of natural religious powers, 
but is of a supernatural character — not your 
own work but the work of God. 

Christian experience, then, is the consciousness 
of a supernatural personal relationship to God, the 
realization of being right with God, being His 
child, through the great work of Jesus Christ. Let 
no one suppose that this means simply a belief in 
the popular doctrine of the fatherhood of God. 
On the contrary, it means a realization of the con-| 
trast between being God’s child by regeneration © 
and being His child in the sense as taught by mod- 
ern theology, namely in the sense that you were 
His child before your conversion. True Christian 
experience brings the firm conviction of the reality 
of the great redemption wrought by Christ; of the 
reality of personal salvation through Him. 

Liberalistic leaders have asserted that the 
Biblical doctrine of salvation is unacceptable to 
them because, so they tell us, it concerns itself 
only with the individual, and not with society and 
its great needs. We are told that the modern 
mind will not accept an individualistic gospel and 
that religion must be socialized. Salvation must 
be interpreted in terms of social service and social 
reconstruction. The representatives of religious 
liberalism ignore the fact that the greatest factor 
for substantially improving things on earth is the 
personal inward transformation through the Gos- 
pel. This is the great power to produce moral 


PERSONAL SALVATION PRICELESS 45 


jIcharacter without which true social improvement 
is impossible. There will always be social improve- 
ment to the extent that the message of the Gospel 
is accepted and the precepts of the Gospel are 
lived. 


Furthermore, modernism overlooks the fact 
that personal salvation is also a far more import- 
ant matter for the individual than the privilege 
to live in a socially improved society. It is more 
important to have the victory of the spirit through 
a personal relationship to God than to have one’s 
social and political and economic desires satisfied. 
And the thought that the world may be regener- 
ated through human instrumentality, or in other 
words, that conditions on earth may be improved 
to such extent that men are no longer born in sin 
and do no longer need personal salvation through 
jesus Christ — this thought is utterly fallacious. 
lf individual reformation does not change the 
-heart of the one who reforms, neither will im- 
provement of social conditions break the organized 
power of evil that is manifest in the world. It 
is quite true that desirable reforms may often be 
accomplished, but to reconstruct, or regenerate 
the world through human instrumentality is im- 
possible. It is not a man’s job. 


While these facts should not be lost sight of, 
it is on the other hand, as intimated in a preceding 
paragraph, just as important to remember that the 
Christian church, in so far as she fulfills her calling, 
is the light of the world and the salt of the earth. 
It is a matter of the utmost importance that the 


46 CHRISTIAN RESPONSIBILITY 


influence of a Christian’s life is what God has de- 
signed it to be. The fact that the world cannot 
be regenerated through human effort can by no 
manner of means be interpreted to mean that the 
believer has no responsibility as to the temporal 
and eternal well-being of his fellows. Biblical 
orthodoxy, unless it be unreal “dead” orthodoxy, | 
manifests itself by a deep sense of responsibility — 
toward those who need the Christian’s service. — 
The Christian’s responsibility is as great as his | 
opportunity for service. But to render such ser- 
vice effectively, the principle of separation from 
worldliness is essential. Worldly, liberalistic re- 
ligiousness ceases to be a light of the world and 
a salt to the earth. 
President S. K. Mosiman says concerning the 
work of Christ: | 
Jesus Christ did not come to bring a set of 
theological doctrines; the apostles were not interested 
in teaching a set of theological doctrines. Christ came 
to live a life and in His life and death to reveal 
God the Father, to mankind. Christianity today is a 


life lived in Christ and not a set of theological for- 
mulas over which to quarrel. 


Similar expressions to the point could be 
quoted from certain other Mennonite writers, if 
space would permit. Doctrine is discounted and 
practical life emphasized. But the most important 
question, Who was Christ and what did He do 
for fallen man? — is a doctrinal one. And if 
Christ had done nothing more than to live a life 
and in His life and death reveal God (who is also 
revealed in the Old Testament Scriptures) He 
would not be the Redeemer of mankind. The 


CHRIST THE REDEEMER . 47 






reatest work of Christ was the Atonement: shed- 
ing His blood and giving His life, “the just for 
he unjust, that He might bring us to God” (1 Pet. 
:18). Living the right kind of life is of the great- 
st importance provided that it is preceded and 
.ccompanied by faith in Christ and in His Atone- 
nent for sin. Man could never save himself by 
ollowing a good example; he could not be his own 
savior. Salvation is the work of Christ on condi- 
ion of faith and repentance. 


IX 


THE MODERNIST VIEW OF MISSION 
WORK 


Religious liberalism has from the beginning 
been either indifferent or antagonistic to Chris-' 
tian missions, In recent years there has been a 
change in its attitude to missions. Liberalism, | 
as represented by those who have accepted modern 
theology, is now professing friendliness to mission 
work. This change of attitude is due to a new 
view regarding the nature and purpose of missions 
which has come to prevail in liberalistic circles. 
The modern view of missions stands in strong 
contrast to the evangelical view. 

Professor Edward Caldwell Moore, of Har- 
vard University, in an article on The _ Liberal 
Movement and Missions, points out that “for the 
missionary achievements of the nineteenth cen- 
tury the churches described as orthodox have 
been almost wholly responsible.’ He says further: 

Hostility to missions, lack of sympathy with the 
aims, dissent from the methods of those eager in the 
missionary propaganda, have been almost a party badge 
of the so-called liberal Christianity. 

The same author in his book on The Spread 
of Christianity im ‘the Modern World, shows that 
rationalists and liberalists were “hostile to mis- 
sions” for the reason that missions stood for the 
Biblical doctrine of salvation, just as the liberals 
were also “alienated from the church at home” 
for the same reason, namely because of the fidelity 


“THERE ARE NO HEATHEN” 49 




















{ 


of the church to the old Bible faith. This testi- 
mony is altogether in accordance with fact. 
| The real cause for this negative, declining 
ittitude of liberalism to Christian missions is not 
lar to seek. True missionary work is always based 
pn the conviction that you have the truth and the 
ruth must be given to others. “The real belief 
n absolute truth,” says a writer in The Unpopular 
Review, “is a missionary state of mind, and carries 
vith it the faith that truth is the one thing worth 
iaving.” Modern liberalism denies the possibility 
»bf knowing absolute religious truth. Furthermore 
't considers all questions of religious doctrine and 
iruth as secondary. Therefore it has no positive 
religious message. The best in Christianity and 
ihe best in heathen religions is, according to the 
1ew theology, only relatively true. If Christian- 
ty be better than some of the non-Christian re- 
igions, we are told, the difference is only in degree, 
deed in some instances in but slight degree. The 
act is that some of the liberals—the Unitarians, 
or example—frankly confess to their own sub- 
stantial unity with certain heathen religions. A 
nitarian writer, having called attention to the 
fact that religious liberalists have more in common 
vith the Liberal Jews, than with orthodox Chris- 
lanity, proceeds to say: 
: Then we think of other non-Christian religions. 
Has it not been the Unitarian group that has led in 
: the affirimation that there are no heathen religions, 
_ that there is one Father over all, and all true thought 
and feeling, yes, all dim groping after truth and 


right, as is divine in origin as the word of Hebrew 
seer or Christian leader? 





50 HEATHEN NOT TO BE CONVERTED 


One of the editors of The Christian Exponent 
in No. 1 of this paper, relates, as an example oi 
Christian courtesy, that a missionary to Japan 
John Hyde De Forest, refused to speak of the 
Japanese as heathen. But why should it be dis- 
courteous to speak of those who do not believe 
in God and are worshipping idols as heathen} 
The fact is that John Hyde De Forest was, ag 
his biography shows, an outspoken higher critic. 
He believed that there is no essential differenc 
between heathenism and Christianity. 

Representatives of religious liberalism in var- 
ious denominations are of the opinion that the 
missionary should not come to the heathen ba 








ing that Christianity is the one true religion, bu 
le should appreciate the heathen religions and 
learn of them, and in turn have the heathen people 
appreciate Christianity and learn of it. 

The science of Comparative Religion “has 
flooded the world with a new light,” says Dr. 
William R. Lawrence. It has shown that “back 
of religions (both Christian and heathen) is re- 
jligion, and each (religion of the world) is ap- 
_preciated and the whole (namely universal re- 
ligion) is apprehended through sympathy.” The 
great heathen faiths should be studied, says this 
writer, “not to catalogue their errors, but to under- 
stand them.” Missionary education should teach 
Christians “to appreciate non-Christian peoples 
and their religious faith, and to approach them 
_{on the platform of universal religion) in a’ spirit 
of helpful comradeship,” instead of undertaking: 





PAGAN FAITHS TO BE PRESERVED 51 


sof the University of Chicago, says: “Gradually 
we have come to see that it is religiously desir- 
, able that the Christianizing of non-Christian peo- 
‘ples shall mean the strengthening and purification 
dof the best religious and moral traits of their 
yuative faith, rather than its complete eradication.” 
4Dr. John Herman Randall writes: “What an 
‘ opportunity is presented today for religion to 
| realize, at last, its true mission in the world and, 
/minimizing all differences, begin to magnify those 
\things common to all religions.” 





The view, held by the representatives of the 
new theology, that mission work means the “in- 
i terpretation” of Christianity to the heathen peo- 
ples on the one hand, and the “interpretation” of 
@ the heathen religions to Christendom on the other, 
raises a number of puzzling questions. It is read- 
ily seen that the supposed task of such interpre- 
itation could not furnish the essential motive for 
mission work, This modern way of reciprocal 
‘religious interpreting implies that heathenism is 
‘-}met on a common basis and is recognized as one in 
--essence with modern Christianity. Besides, if the 
modernist view of the Christian faith is ac- 
cepted, namely that Christian doctrine is to be 
‘considered as of only secondary importance, to ac- 
ouaint heathen peoples with it must also be a 
secondary matter. Neither could religious liberal- 
ists consistently expect to find the doctrines of 
non-Christian religions to be of a more vital char- 
acter than the doctrines of the Christian faith. It 
follows that interpreting the West to the East 


52 SALVATION BY POLITICAL ENDEAVORS 


and the East to the West can not be a matter of 

primary religious import. And such interpretation 

cannot be reasonably named mission work. Be 

it repeated here for emphasis that the Unitarians 

are showing good sense by their refusal to speak | 
of their own work as mission work when they 

simply enter into fellowship with representatives | 
of heathen religions recognizing them as co-work- F 
ers in a common cause. 

But the new view of missions includes more 
than mere mutual interpretation of religion. Its) 
burden is the social gospel. Instead of working” 
for the salvation of individuals by faith in our 
Lord Jesus Christ, modernist missionary endeavor — 
undertakes to save society by socialization and 
reforms of various description. Dean Shailer: 
Mathews, of the theological department of the™ 
University of Chicago, says on this point: | 

We used to regard the foreign missionary as try- 
ing to save brands from the burning. Now we can see 
he is also putting out the conflagration (making en- | 
deavor for individual salvation wunnecessary). — If 
Christianity can only rescue brands from the burning 
but has no power to put out the fire (then we have) 
a religion doomed to disappear with the advance of 
ethical liberalism. — The new social interest of 
Protestant Christianity..__....wants to save men into’ 
heaven by embodying the principles of the kingdom of 
heaven in the state. It is less concerned in rescuing 


people than in educating them to keep them out of 
danger. 


A writer who was formerly connected with 

a Christian college in China says: _ : 
| The church of today is increasingly emphasizing 
that part of its message which has to do with trans- 












THE NEW MISSIONARY APPEAL 53 


forming this world into the Kingdom of God. Chris- 
tians are today attacking sin by trying to abolish 
poverty ignorance and disease. Pursuant to this con- 
ception missionaries art emphasizing in China, educa- 
tion, medical work, famine relief, and help for the 
unfortunate members of «society. In all this they 
meet with a hearty response, for the Confucian 
school that has so dominated Chinese thought through 
the ages directs its energies largely toward making 


human society ideal. — The social message of Chris- 
tianity is strikingly in accord with the best of Chinese 
tradition. 


All unbiased students will admit that religious 
| liberalism is more nearly akin to Confucianism 
than to New Testament Christianity. 


| Modernists regard religion as a means of 
' what they suppose to be a higher end, namely 
| the improvement of conditions on earth, Professor 
J. Gresham Machen writes on this point: 


Fifty years ago, missionaries made their appeal 
in the light of eternity. “Millions of men,” they were 
accustomed to say, “are going down to eternal de- 
struction; Jesus is a Savior sufficient for all; send 
us out therefore with the message of salvation while 
yet there is time.” Some missionaries thank God, 
still speak in that way. But very many missionaries 
make quite a different appeal. “We are missionaries 
to India,” they say. “Now India is in ferment; 
Bolshevism is creeping in; send us out to India that the 
menace may be checked.” Or else they say: “We are 
missionaries to Japan; Japan will be dominated by 
militarism unless the principles of Jesus have sway; 
send us therefore to prevent the calamity of war.’ 


| Another object included in the modern view 
of missions is stated by Gerald Birney Smith: 
“One of the supreme tasks of the church (both 


54 LACK OF MISSIONARY MOTIVE 


West and East) in a democratic age is to make, | 
universally accessible the historical interpretation 
«of the Bible” i. e. the liberalistic religious views. 
In other words, the defenders of modernism con- 
‘sider it the church’s business to spread the mod- | 
‘ernist theology. Nothing is more natural than 
this. You could not expect a liberalistic church 
to propagate the evangelical faith, could you? 
Now the greatest impediment in the way of such 
liberalistic endeavor is old fashioned New Testa- 
ment Christianity. As for heathenism it decidedly 
has liberalistic tendencies 

Professor William Brenton Greene, Jr., of 
Princeton Theological Seminary, in a timely ar- 
ticle on The Crises of Christianity, writes, 

Again, the crisis of Christianity appears in this. that 
while her missionaries are multiplying, their gospel, it 
would seem, here and there, little by little, is being de- 
pleted and emasculated. Such is the warning that is 
now coming to us from China. Such is the warning 
that is beginning to come to us from other fields. Could. 
anything be so appalling? We have been wont to look 
on our Foreign Missions as the demonstration that the 
church is obeying her Lord’s last and great commission 
to “go into all the world and preach the gospel to the 
whole creation.” But what if the gospel which some 
missionaries preach is another gospel which is not a 


gospel? This would prove treason both in the council 
tent and on the firing line. | 


The representatives of the modern view of. 
missions have done very little along any line 
for the heathen nations. They have a way, how- 
ever, of diverting eangelical mission effort into 
liberalistic channels. Liberalism, by the con- 
fession of some of its own adherents, lacks the 





ba 





DISHONEST USE OF MONEY 55 


true missionary motive. Has it ever been heard 
of, that people are tithing themselves in order to 
spread the modern religious liberalism among 
heathen nations? We think not. But there are 
_many, many loyal Christian believers who tithe 
themselves to assist in bringing the precious Gos- 
pel of salvation to those who grope in heathen 
darkness. They have the missionary spirit for the 
_ reason that they are convinced to have in the Chris- 
_ tian faith the most valuable treasure. They real- 
ize that the greatest service to be rendered to 
others is to spread the faith through which they 
have found salvation. There are those who give 
tithes of their income though they themselves are 
doing without some things that are generally 
supposed to be needful. Some do not have the 
means to educate their own children properly. 
They make sacrifices out of love to their Lord, to 
bring to the heathen this priceless treasure. Now 
for religious liberalists to use such money for 
| liberalistic purposes in accordance with the new 
_ view of missions, is by all odds the greatest off- 
fence of which liberalism is guilty. That such 
conditions are possible is also a serious blot on the 
good name of the Christian Church, It is only 
fair to say that liberalism should not undertake 


| the liberalization and socialization of the world 





if its own constituency is unwilling to support this 
work by furnishing the needed means. 


The Indianapolis Convention 


The annual convention of the World’s Student 


56 MODERNIZATION OF STUDENTS MOVEMENT 


Volunteer Movement was held a few months ago 
in Indianapolis. This organization represents the 
cause of missions at large. It works in the interest 
of Protestant mission endeavors regardless of diver- 
gencies of creed. It does not differentiate between 
the old Bible faith and modernism. ‘The organ- 
ization seeks to advance the general mission 
cause without taking into consideration the fact 
that this cause is only partially given to the 
propagation of the Christian faith. The fact is 
disregarded that a large number of modernists 
have in the last decade been sent by Protestant 
mission societies and that these modernists on the 
mission fields are engaged in spreading the prin- 
ciples of modernism. Among the delegates as- 
embled in Indianapolis many came from the most 
outspokenly liberalistic American colleges and sem- 
inaries. In England the modernization of this 
movement has progressed to such a degree that 
the Publishing House of the British branch of 
the organization has issued liberalistic literature 
of various description. The following quotation 


is taken from a book published by this publishing 


house: 
We may perhaps in some things be driven to 
modify or to ignore certain views of Christ, for exam- 


ple, in his theological or scientific statements where | 


they seem to conflict with His spirit or with nese | 


gated facts. 


In other words, in no line whatever, not even 


in matters of faith and theology, is Christ con- 
sidered an authority. In consequence of this 
attitude of pronounced liberalism a large number 


| 


A CONTRAST 57 


of evangelical student volunteers in England have 
renounced this organization to form a separate 
body standing for the fundamentals of the Chris- 
tian faith. 

As Christian believers we are not in the least 
interested in the missionary efforts put forth by 
modernists, On the contrary, we are interested in 
counteracting their destructive work on the mission 
field. It is a significant fact that The Christian 
i-xponent has published two long articles — one 
of them an editorial — describing the Indianapolis 
Convention, without a word to indicate the real 
character of this movement. On the other hand, 
the same paper gave only a short notice (such 
as one should have supposed might have sufficed, 
as an item of news, on the said convention) to the 
Mennonite Fundamentals Conference held recently 
in Fulton County, Ohio. 


x 
THE SOCIAL GOSEEE 


Modernism rejects the Bible teaching on || 
man’s sinfulness and the Biblical conception of the | 
world. The “exceeding sinfulness of sin,” the | 
existence of Satan and his kingdom, and the need 
of supernatural salvation are denied. For the Bible 
message of personal reconstruction the social gos- 
pel substitutes the call to social reconstruction. | 

Not long ago the General Secretary of Home — 
Missions of one of the more prominent denomina- 
tions in a public address set forth the nature and 
meaning of the social gospel, he himself being an 


ardent advocate of it. His address in substance | 


follows. . 
The thought that there is a kingdom of evil besides 
the kingdom of God is all wrong. There is only one 
kingdom and every man is a citizen of it. Since there 
is only one immanent life force, the world is a unit 
and man is also a unit. There is no room therefore 
for the old conception of sin. Furthermore there 
should be no attempt made to draw a line of dis- 
tinction between things religious and secular, holy 
and unholy, Christian and non-Christian, the church il 
and the world. Sin is, in the last analysis, not a 
personal but a social evil. It is the result of improper _ 
social conditions. This means that sin and evil cannot 
be quite so bad as they seem to be. Considered from | 
the viewpoint of the social gospel the thought that — 
God would condemn a man because of sin is offensive. 
Since man is inherently good and all men are 
God’s children, there is in modern religion no place 
for individual salvation. The divine plan of sal- 
vation of which conservatives still speak is super- 








SALVATION A SOCIAL TERM 59 


stition. What is needed is not individual but social 
salvation. For although the world is God’s kingdom, 
it does not follow that all is developed to perfection, 
or is incapable of further improvement. Such a con- 
ception would not fit into the scheme of general 
evolution. Salvation has, become a social term. It 
means that the world must be made better socially 
by reforms and social improvements of various kinds, 
by education and moral advancement. 

In a word, the social gospel addresses itself to the 
task to make the world a decent place to live in. 
This is the business of the church in the new age. 
What was formrely spoken of as religious endeavor is 
of value only in so far as it serves social ends. 

The social gospel, in other words, lays enormous 
emphasis on man’s physical and material well- 
being. Religion is held to be nothing more than a 
plan for social welfare. Christianity is considered 
a scheme of social improvement. It is reduced 
to humanitarian and social endeavors, Education 
and sanitation take the place of personal regenera- 
tion and the Holy Spirit. True spiritual Chris- 
tianity is denied. “Our old religion was a process 


of saving a few souls here and there out of a 


’ 


world that we condemned as bad,” says a promin- 
ent Methodist preacher of the state of New York; 
“the new religion is a community affair, and we 
will make our towns and our cities the right kind 
of places so that everybody will be a Christian as a 
matter of course. When it used to be hard to be 
good, it will become difficult to be bad.” Individual 
salvation is practically spurned and denied. 
Considering the question from the viewpoint 
of New Testament Christianity some fatal weak- 
nesses of the social gospel are in evidence. The 





60 ESSENCE OR FRUIT? 


new gospel identifies essence and fruit. Making 
social service the most important feature of Chris-| 
tianity, the fruit is mistaken for the essence. In 
fact, the fruit is divorced from the tree that prog 
duces it. Social betterment is excellent as the} 
outgrowth of Christianity; the attempts to make 
it a substitute for the Christian religion have 
signally failed. The social gospel overlooks the 
fact that man’s greatest needs are of a spiritual 
nature, and hence the greatest service to man is 
to supply these needs. The new gospel ignores the| 
vital and fundamental isues that have to do with’ 
man’s spiritual well-being and true betterment. 
The primary duty of the church, namely, to give 
spiritual food to the souls of men, is set aside. 
It is a wholesale effort for the improvement of 
mankind on the surface rather than for better- 
ment in the mainspring of the heart where the 
seat of evil lies. [ 





The social gospel, then, fails to dist itiole 
between Christian service and social service. But 
the two are not identical. The successful business 
man, or laborer, is rendering valuable social ser- 
vice though he may not be a Christian, or he may 
be a Christian only nominally and hence may be 
lacking the Christian motive that is essential to 
Christian service. 


Rejecting, in short, the Christian view o 
man’s sinfulness and of an evil world, the socia 
gospel prescribes reformation as the needed rem 
edy. Reformation and man-wrought changes ar 
Lelieved adequate to make the individual as wel 


REFORMATION OR REGENERATION? 61 









as the world all that is to be desired. Now it 
cannot be questioned for a moment that reform 
is good in its place. If a thief ceases to steal 
nd begins to work for an honest living, he is 
oing a praiseworthy thing. Christianity does 
not hold the absurd view that the vicious and 
rofligate are as desirable members of society 
s they who live honorable lives. But it is the 
hurch’s business to stand for Christianization 
in the New Testament sense, not for mere refor- 
mation. A sinner who reforms is not for that 
reason a Christian. Reformation will not change 
the human heart. Regeneration is the work of 
God. 


Social service as a substitute for the old 
Gospel message has been tried out by Unitarians 
and other liberal churches. There is abundant 
proof to show that it has utterly failed, a fact 
that is persistently ignored by its present advo- 
cates. The churches which have embraced the 
social gospel, says a writer in The Harvard 
Theological Review, “have distinctly weakened 
their life and influence.” A writer in The Biblical 
World says: “The secularization of the activities 
of the church has weakened its spiritual life 
and emptied its pews of devout worshippers.” 


XI 
DO SCIENCE AND RELIGION CONFLICT? 


Between the natural and the supernatural, 
or miraculous, there is a vital difference, yet it is 
needful to keep in mind that God may use natural 
law to accomplish a particular purpose. The super- 
natural, on the other hand, is done above and be- 
yond natural law. To say with modernism that 
the supernatural is impossible is to deny the omni- 
potence of God. 


The statement that there is no conflict be- 
tween science and religion has various meanings 
depending upon the personal position of the one 
who may use such an expression. A Christian be- 
liever saying that there is no conflict between 
science and religion means that the claims of 
modern science, in so far as they are antagonistic 
to Scripture, are unfounded. A modernist using 
the same expression means the very contrary, 
namely that religion is acceptable only in so far 
as it is based on natural law and is explainable by 
science. 


Now the principal facts on which the Chris- 
tian religion is founded are of miraculous nature. 
The incarnation and resurrection of Jesus Christ. 
and other miracles cannot be explained by natural 
law or science, neither can the divine work of 
grace in the human heart be so explained. It is 
due to the direct working of the Holy Spirit. 
These things are consequently disowned by the 


THE SUPERNATURAL IS MIRACULOUS _ 63 


more advanced modernists. They hold a monistic 
view of the world and insist that there is no such 
thing as the working of God above and beyond 
natural law. They declare that all truth is 
uniform with the same laws of nature and there- 
fore the supernatural is unreal. They deny that 
something that is out of harmony with the truth 
of natural law ever took pace. 


In an article in the Goshen College Record, 

a few years ago, it was stated that “two sets of 
truth’ could not well be taught in the same school. 
N. E. Byers, in an article entitled Our Future Place 
im Christian Education, published in The Christian 
Evangel, says that for our colleges we need 
teachers “who can lead our best students to 
see that truth as we believe it is in full harmony 
with all truth as they know it.” If this meant 
simply that they should be led to see that Menno- 
nite doctrine is true, the question would be in 
order, why should it be only “our best students” 
that are led to recognize this? Is it not a fact that 
this is believed by Mennonites in general? Liberalistic 
science claims that the Bible is unreliable on ques- 
tions in which it differs from certain suppositions 
and hypotheses of modern science. And instead of 
recognizing that the supernatural is not within the 
province of scientific investigation, modern science 
claims that all must be tested by science and natur- 
al law (science is, in fact, the truth of natural 
law) and that all real truth is in accordance with 
the same. Yet the supernatural does not agree with 
natural law. The most fundamental doctrines of 


64 NATURE A TESTIMONY FOR GOD 


the faith are not in agreement with such truth as 
applies to natural occurrences. 


Now modern science by taking an attitude of 
negation with reference to the supernatural, over- 
steps the bounds of its own realm. The fact is 
that nature itself and natural law is a proof of the 
possibility of the miracle. Nothing less than the 
supernatural, miraculous work of God can ac- 
count for the existence of nature. Evolution does 
not offer a real explanation. Evolutionists them- 
selves admit that they cannot explain how life 
criginated upon earth. The origin of life calls for 
a work that is superior to natural law — a miracle. 
Again they who assert that man is nothing more 
than a highly developed animal make an assertion 
which is not only incapable of evidence but is 
clearly contrary to fact. 


A miracle cannot be explained by natural 
law or by science, yet science is unscientific when 
it asserts that a miracle is impossible to God. There 
is no scientific evidence whatever against the om- 
nipotence of God, or the Deity of Christ, or any 
other doctrine of the Christian faith. On the 
contrary, as already stated, nature itself is a wit- 
ness for God, and there is in Christian experience 
abundant proof of the possibility of the super- 
natural and miraculous. The Christian believer 
who makes faithful use of his privileges, lives in 
the atmosphere of the supernatural. So far from 
believing that the supernatural is impossible, he 
is convinced that God’s Word is true, 


XII 


NONRESISTANCE AND 
FUNDAMENTALISM 


Under this title an editorial article was printed 
in The Christian Exponent, as already noted. The 
editor makes the following sweeping statement 
concerning the fundamentalists. 

We remember that in the late war they spoke of 
Jesus Christ as walking up and down through the 


trenches on the battle fields blessing the war, and 
those who fought in it.” 


Now this is clearly an unwarranted generaliza- 
tion, It is true that some of the fundamentalists 
(outside of nonresistant churches) as well as some 
of the modernists did this sort of thing. Yet 
the anti-modernists (not taking into consideration 
those within the nonresistant churches) have a 
better record in regard to this matter than the 
modernists. 

The editor of The Christian Exponent refers 
to the modernist leader Harry Emerson Fosdick as 
one who has expressed himself approvingly on the 
point of nonresistance. However, the fact is that 
Fosdick has a decidedly unfavorable personal re- 
cord as concerns this question. Before the war he, 
like other liberalists, believed that the world had 
reached such a stage of betterment and Christian- 
ization that war was a thing of the past; he held 
that an armed conflict is never justifiable. When 
the great war came, Fosdick published a pamphlet 
in which he explained that “circumstances alter 


66 OPPOSITION TO NONRESISTANCE 


eases.” He called upon the Christian church of 
America to support the war. Again in 1919 he 
published an article in the Atlantic Monthly, pre- 
dicting a great revival of religion through the in- 
fluence of the soldiers returning from France. At 
the present time he has swung back to the position 
which he held before the war. He now again 
admits that war is unchristian in character, though 
he is careful not to reject it outright. He says: 
I find it difficult to imagine any situation in which 
I shall feel justified in sanctioning or participating in 
another war. 

This means that his attitude on the point in 
question will depend on the situation that may a- 
rise. As for the stand which the Conscientious 
Objectors — the real nonresistants — took in the 
war, he expressly repudiates their position. In the 
final analysis his position on the point in question 
does not differ from that of Lloyd George, who 
said recently: “As is well known, I was strongly 
for the war while the war lasted. Now I am just 
as strongly for peace.” | 

Nor is Fosdick alone among the modernist 
leaders in taking a spineless attitude like this so 
long as the war continued, More than a dozen of 
these leaders could be named that have a similar 
record. Shailer Mathews, the head of the theologi- 
cal department of the University of Chicago, be- 
fore the war actually defended the principle of 
nonresistance, and he maintained this position 
during the first stages of the conflict. But after 
America had become involved he wrote an editor- 
ial article in The Biblical World saying the most 


EFFECTS OF “WAR FEVER” 67 


unkind words about the Conscientious Objectors. 
In a recent article he again disapproves of war, 
though he does not defend the principle of non- 
resistance. He also warns of religious controversy, 
which obviously means that in his opinion no 
impediment should be laid in the way of modern- 
ism. 

Now the facts are these: Before the war the 
modernists as a class declared that war was un- 
justifiable, since it did not fit into their scheme of 
world-improvement. The fundamentalists as a 
class did not believe that war was a thing of the 
past. When the war came there was no difference 
between these two classes. The modernists as 
well as the fundamentalists outside of the nonre- 
istant churches supported the war while it lasted. 
Yet it is interesting to notice that among the more 
prominent church leaders of America there was 
apparently only one who for a long period gave 
practically all his time to war propaganda, and he 
is a modernist: Newell Dwight Hillis, D. D., of 
New York (now occupying the pulpit of Henry 
Ward Beecher) who by many is considered the 
greatest pulpit orator of America. He travelled 
through the land giving addresses in which he told 
hair-raising stories about Hun-atrocities and abject- 
ness. On the other hand, the well-known fun- 
damentalist leader, Philip Mauro, set an example 
which to all appearance none of the modernist 
leaders followed: He visited training camps to 
encourage Conscientious Objectors in their noble 
stand for Christian principle. That all the funda- 


68 IMPORTANCE OF NONRESISTANCE 


‘mentalists outside of the nonresistant churches 
4avored the war is an obvious error. 


It should be remembered that a man who 
‘denies Christ, disbelieving His Deity, His super- 
natural birth, and His resurrection, is not a Chris- 
tian, even if he believed in the principle of non- 
resistance. It cannot be denied that there are 
Christians — believers in Christ — who are in 
error on the very important point of nonresistance. 
You would not say that there were no Christians 
among those who supported the last war, would 
your There were Christians among them; but they 
were either unenlightened or disobedient. Impor- 
tant as is the principle of nonresistance, the doc- 
trine of the Deity of Christ is more important. 
Placing first things first we have the fundamentals 
of the faith and then the principles and command- 
ments that have reference to practical life and 
conduct. If you deny Christ, these principles 
lose their importance. Therefore, even if it were 
correct that Fosdick accepts the principle of non- 
resistance (which is not the case), the distance be- 
tween us and a modernist, such as he is, would be 
greater than that between us and the fundamentalists 
(anti-modernists) even though many of them 
do not teach nonresistance. After all is said, the 
fact remains that fundamentalists in other churches 
have more in common with us than modernists 
who disown the fundamentals of the Christian 
faith. If there were liberalists who agree with the 
position which the conservative Mennonites take 
on the point of nonresistance (a supposition 


— 


FIRST THINGS TO COME FIRST : 69 


that is quite improbable) this would not pL: 
the said fact. 


To illustrate the point. The most eminent 
Russian writer, Tolstoy, defended the principlé of 
nonresistance, but was not a Christian believer. 
Yherefore, though he was right on an important 
point, his influence did not count for the Christian . 
cause. On the contrary, his rejection of supernat- 
ural religion, his teachings on communism and oth- 
er points had a decidedly detrimental influence on 
the Russian people. In spite of his views on non- 
resistance, Tolstoy was largely instrumental in pre- 
paring the way for Bolshevism in Russia. The 
Greek Catholic Russian state church has a long 
register of misdeeds and sins standing against her, 
yet she had the courage to excommunicate the 
greatest writer and most famous man of Russia 
tor his flagrant infidelity, a man whom some of our 
popular American churches would doubtless have 
welcomed into their fold — Tolstoy. 


Another illustration. The Mennonite Church 
at Ouddorp in Holland has been without a minister 
for two years. The congregation declined the 
offer to have their pulpit supplied at intervals by 
ministers of neighboring Mennonite churches, for 
the reason that these ministers are radically liber- 
alistic. The congregation would have no services 
rather than listen to a preacher who denies the 
fundamentals of the faith. A# efforts to secure a 
Mennonite minister who believes in the Scriptures 
as God’s Word proved fruitless. Recently the con- 
gregation has extended a call to an anti-modernist 


70 A MATTER OF CONSCIENCE ONLY? 


minister of the Reformed Church to become their 
pastor, presumably on the condition that he for- 
mally unite with the church. It need not be 
said that to call a Reformed preacher to the pas- 
torate of a Mennonite Church is inconsistent, yet 
it is not so inconsistent as to give such a call to 
a modernist though he may be a Mennonite by 
name. 

Then again we will do well to remember that 
the attitude of some of the Mennonites of Amer- 
ica on the question of war did not differ so much 
from that of the outspoken supporters of the war. 
Normar. Thomas, in his book, The Conscientious 
Objector in America, points out that President 
S. K. Mosiman gave the following advice to Men- 
nonite boys: 

It is impossible for me to tell you what to do. 


This is a matter of conscience and it is your conscience 
that must decide. 


The Mennonite Church has, on the contrary, 
always held that God’s Word is the final authority. 
The point in question is, What does the Word 
teach regarding the principle of nonresistance? 
it cannot be doubted that thousands of Christian 
professors have served in the war without com- 
punction of conscience. Conscience is a_ safe 


guide only when it is enlightened by the Word of 
God. 


XIII 


NONRESISTANCE AND MODERNIST 
IDEALISM 


N. E. Byers writes in The Christian Exponent, 
No. 5: 


During the world war men were rallied to a high 
sounding slogan (“to make the world safe for demo- 
cracy”) at the time of a crisis, under the stress of a 
great excitement, by mass movement. Individuals by 
themselves had never been educated to such high and 
all-inclusive sympathies [to make the world safe for 
democracy through war] and when the excitement was 
over (as soon as the armistice was signed) each one 
dropped to his own level of character. 

In the opinion of this writer then, those who 
took an active part in the world war were, 
while engaged in war, standing on a higher level 
of character than before or after the war. He 
thinks, when the excitement of war was over, 
they dropped to their former level because they 
had never been educated to such high and all-in- 
clusive sympathies as they manifested during the 
war. We realize that the said writer does not 
desire to approve of war, and yet he thinks the 
men who were engaged in war were standing on a 
higher level of character while the war lasted. 

The question is here in order, If this was the 
case, how is it to be accounted for that so many 
of the men lost out entirely both morally and re- 
ligiously while engaged in military service? How 
is it possible that army chaplains even excused the 


72 A HIGHER LEVEL OF CHARACTER? 


shocking profanity that the soldiers as a rule in- 
dulged in? How can men who are engaged in 
such exercises as bayonet practice in the camps 
and the horrors of actual warfare, stand on a 
higher level of character? Obviously the said 
writer does not speak here of character from the 
Christian viewpoint but from the point of view of 
modernist idealism. He has much to say in praise 
cf such idealism but is there not here a striking 
proof of the inferiority of modern idealism? 

There is not an unfavorable word to be said 
concerning true ideals, yet the modern idealism 
lacks the Christian foundation, motive and back- 
ground. It has no true foundation to build upon, 
therefore it suffers from uncertainty and spineless- 
ness. No philosophical idealism can do away with 
the fact that the longer the war lasted, the more 
unfit became the men for effecting a betterment of 
conditions in church and state after their return. 
And a few more years of war would have meant 
the end of European civilization. The fact remains 
that war is the greatest curse and enemy of man- 
kind. A great many of those who once believed 
that it meant a step upward for them to become a 
part of the military machine are of different opin- 
ion today. 

The editor of a religious weekly published in 
Chicago has recently expressed himself on the 
point in question in a way that deserves attention. 
The following quotation is somewhat lengthy but 
is just to the point and is worth reading. 


A great question mark has been written over the 
whole war. Steadily the truth has been forcing itself 


A WAR TO END WAR? 73 


upon us all that what was passed for idealism during 
the war was a compound of sentimentality and pro- 
paganda. It served its purpose of stimulating the 
people to fight; it won the war. But when the tumult 
and shouting had died this pseudo-idealism could not 
stand the test of reality. It was not idealism at all. 
It was an artificial though marvelously skillful manipu- 
lation of idealistic concepts which could not in the 
nature of things have the backing of reality. This 
is simply an abstract way of saying that the ideal 
aims and motives with which Mr. Wilson sought to 
sublimate the war and make it a holy thing were all 
along and have since proved to be false to fact. It is 
a hard thing to say, but it no longer requires courage 
to say it, since practically every voice from that of 
Mr. Lloyd George to the Chicago Tribune now joins 
in an almost unanimous verdict that the war was a 
dead loss even to the victors. 

Our world war did just the same thing that war 
‘has always done — it sought to sanctify itself with 
the vestments of the highest idealism it could com- 
mand. Mr. Wilson declared that this was God’s war, 
a war for human liberty. And men believed him. He 
believed himself. The spirit of war had filled the 
world. It held us all. It held our scholar president. 
In our war mood he seemed a prophet, a spokesman 
for God. Our idealism was the idealism of a dream. 
We had been caught up into the air of unreality and 
there was a wide space between us and the firm ground 
of truth. 

We now begin to see that we have believed lies. 
This war was not waged to end war. It was not a 
universal errand of chivalry on behalf of the op- 
pressed. It was not a war to make the world safe 
for democracy. 

The opinion that the soldiers during the war 
had risen above their former level of character, is not 


true to fact. 


XIV 
WHAT IS RELIGIOUS INDIVIDUALISM? 


One of the innate characteristics of modernism 
is an aversion against authority, especially against 
authoritative statement of doctrine and against 
doctrinal tests of any kind. 

J. E. Hartzler said in the address previously 
mentioned, given at a session of the All-Mennonite 
Convention: 

How the church ever passed from the Sermon 
on the Mount to the Nicene Creed will always be a 
mystery. Nothing but a philosophical acrobatic stunt 
will explain. 

As if the Nicene Creed, that is to say, the con- 
fession of the fundamentals of the Christian faith, 
were not in perfect agreement with the Sermon 
on the Mount. In fact, a number of the funda- 
mentals are either expressed or implied in the 
Sermon on the Mount, and the rest of the funda- 
mentals are taught in other parts of the Scriptures. 
That they are not all mentioned in the Sermon 
on the Mount does not detract from their authori- 
tative value. 

The editor of The Christian Exponent, in a 
recent editorial, declares that “we stand solidly on 
the evangelical faith and the principles of Christ” 
and then says nevertheless that theology, or doc- 
trine, and faith are of minor importance. These 
are his words: 


We offer as a basis for unity and for the solution 
of our present difficulties only one remedy and one 
rule, viz., that Christians so-called will really follow 


DOCTRINE CONSIDERED SECONDARY 75 


the Christ whom they profess, and that all of us 
will make a sincere and earnest effort to make our 
first and primary concern not theology, creed or cus- 
tom, but to know and to do His will. 

A superficial reading of these sentences may 
not disclose their real meaning. Certainly no 
Christian believer would think of saying a word 
against the importance of knowing and doing the 
will of Christ. This is of the utmost importance 
provided you accept the doctrine of the true Deity 
of Christ, that is to say, that you do not have a 
modernized view of it such, for example, as the 
socialists have who claim that Christ was a great 
social reformer and they are following Him and 
doing His will when they devote themselves to 
socialistic propaganda. 

S.. Burkhard, in the letter mentioned before, 
says: 

Jesus is the champion of life and dedicated his 
whole life to the program of bringing the more 
abundant life to every man. 

This writer gives a description of the life of 
which, in his opinion, Jesus was the champion. 
His statements on this point are shocking to the 
believing Christian. He defines Christianity as 
liberty and demands a life free from the restraint 
which Christ himself and all His true followers | 
believed essential. 

Modernism holds that questions of theology, 
creed and doctrine are of comparatively little im- 
portance, Therefore, they tell us, it is the proper 
thing for Christian believers to extend the hand 
of Christian fellowship to those who question and 


76 AN INADEQUATE BASIS 


modernize the fundamentals of the faith. Now any 
one who is used to doing his own thinking will 
readily see that such doctrines as the inspiration 
of the Scriptures and the supernatural birth of 
Christ are of the most fundamental importance. 
If Christ were not the one He said He was, 
then His precepts and commands would lose 
much, if not all, of their importance. Nor can 
the Conservative Mennonite Church be accused 
of making light of the commands of the Lord, 
though we are emphasizing the fundamentals as 
of the greatest importance. On the other hand, 
an inquiry into the question, whether or not mod- 
ernist congregations are keeping the commands of 
Christ will lead to surprising results. The fact is, 
that, as a rule, the modernists who consider the 
fundamentals of the faith as of secondary import- 
ance, hold the commands of Christ as of even less 
importance than they do the fundamentals. 


In a recent number of De Zondagsbode, for 
example, the Mennonite minister of. Dordrecht 
emphasizes this leading principle of liberalism, viz., 
that theology, doctrine and creed are secondary 
matters and should be treated as such. Yet no one 
who is acquainted with the facts would claim that 
the Mennonites of Holland, though they hold that 
practical questions are of greater importance, con- 
cern themselves as much about knowing and doing 
the will of Christ, as do those who hold that doc- 
trine is of primary importance. 

A basis of union, such as the editor of The 
Christian Exponent suggests, making theology 


“PROVE THE SPIRITS” 77 


and creed secondary matters, is not a Scriptural 
basis. It is, in essence, liberalistic and in positive 
contradiction to Mennonite principles. 

In an article The Faith of Our Fathers, pub- 
lished in The Christian Exponent, J. E. Hartzler 
says: The Fathers of the Church “knew that 
Christianity was not a religion which imposed 
dogmatic uniformity in matters of creed.” He 
asserts further that they defended “the right of 
any person under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, 
to freely interpret the Bible for him or herself.” 
On the same question, C. Henry Smith, in his 
book, The Mennonites, has the following to say: 

Mennonitism is the essence of individualism. 
The individual is to interpret the Bible for himself; 
he is to worship as he pleases and to obey only his 
Own conscience in all matters of religious faith. 

The assertion of “the right of any person, 
under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to freely 
interpret the Bible for him or herself’ may sound 
‘innocent enough. Certainly no church would put 
itself on record as taking issue with the Holy 
Spirit’s guidance. But the point in question is, 
how it is to be decided whether, in a given case, 
the claim of the Spirit’s guidance is correct. We 
are told that every person must decide for himself. 
This is true in a sense. Religion is an individual, 
personal matter. But this does not answer the 
question what is to be done when there is dis- 
agreement in some particular case as to the cor- 
rectness of a claim of the Holy Spirit’s guidance 
in the interpretation of the Word. The early 
Mennonites disapproved the view that this matter 


78 A WELL-DEFINED FAITH 


can be left entirely to the individual. In other 
words, they did not believe that every claim of the 
Spirit’s guidance must be recognized by the 
Church, They insisted, on the contrary, that the 
spirits must be proved. So far from considering 
this a strictly individual matter, the right to 
decide the more serious questions of this sort 
was not even exercised by the congregation. The 
early Mennonites believed that it is the province 
of the Church as a unit, that is to say, the spokes- 
men or representatives of the various congrega- 
tions, to decide on questions of faith and practice. 
History records a number of conferences held by 
Menno Simons and his co-workers to decide on 
important questions of doctrine and practice. The 
brotherhood evidently believed that the church 
leaders were best qualified to give such decisions. 


That the early Mennonite Church held a well- 
defined position as to creed, doctrine and practice 
is an established fact. Only a few of the proofs 
can here be given. The writings of Menno Si- 
mons, Dirck Philips and others are defences of the 
faith and practice of the Church. Menno Simons’ 
writings show that there arose in his day a 
numerous party advancing the claim that obedience 
to Christ’s commands was not required where 
serious danger was involved. Since baptism was 
forbidden by the authorities, it was not to be 
practiced. Those who entertained such views 
were not recognized as members of the Church, 
any more than others who held that the position 


of the Church on the point of nonresistance was 


POSITIVE IN DENIAL 79 


wrong. There were in Menno Simons’ time many 
Christian professors who claimed that the Scrip- 
tures teach infant baptism. It need not be said 
that such could not hold membership in the Men- 
noniie Church. One of the bishops of the early 
Mennonite Church, Adam Pastor, gradually drifted 
into Unitarianism: the denial of the Deity of 
Christ. After earnest efforts had been made to 
reclaim him, he was excommunicated, notwith- 
standing his assertion that his view was Scriptural. 
In our day there are those who used to be mem- 
bers of the Mennonite Church and claim that they 
were led into Russellism by the guidance of the 
Holy Spirit. In a word, the Church would lose 
its identity if the question of the Holy Spirit’s 
leading would be left entirely to the individual 
members. 


The opinion that it is not the Church’s busi- 
ness to uphold a definite creed and that the Church 
should consider questions of doctrine and faith as 
secondary and leave them to the individual mem- 
bers to decide, is called individualism. It is readily 
seen that individualism is but another word for 
modernism. It means that there is to be no au- 
thority above the individual self. Today the 
strongest organization standing for religious indi- 
vidualism are the Unitarians. They claim to be 
absolute individualists but this is, after all, not a 
fact, A Unitarian professor wrote: “The bond of 
union among us all is the fight against the deity 
of Jesus Christ.” So they, after all, take a position 
as concerns Christian doctrine, viz., a position of a 


80 INFALLIBLE INTERPRETERS NEEDED? 


hegative character. You are welcome to hold 
membership with them so long as you deny the 
fundamentals of the faith, However, many of 
the Unitarians realize that they are not a church; 
they call themselves a society. For this they 
deserve credit. 

The state has its laws to which the citizens 
must conform and those who break the laws are 
temporarily separated by confinement in prisons. 
The church also has its creed according to which 
it is maintained and those who do not abide by 
it will lose their membership. The principle that 
every inhabitant of a given land should make his 
own laws, or, in other words, that every man 
should be a law unto himself, and that the state 
has no right to make binding laws — this is the 
principle of anarchy. Just so the assertion that 
the church should have no well-defined or binding 
creed, that she should not defend anything definite 
as concerns matters doctrinal and religious — that 
every member should follow his own autonomous 
conscience — this is the principle of religious 
anarchy. A group of people, or the population of a 
given territory, recognizing no civil authority, 
would not constitute a state. Neither is a group 
of persons defending religious individualism a 
church. 


XV 
LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE 


Several Mennonite writers have advanced a 
strange interpretation of the principle of liberty 
of conscience, They say the early Mennonites 
defended this principle, which is a fact. Menno 
Simons and his co-workers held that neither civil 
government nor any person in authority should 
compel people to unite with a church. The 
Mennonite Fathers protested against the union of 
church and state and against persecution. Mod- 
ernism on the other hand, claims that according 
to the principle of liberty of conscience, the 
Church should permit any one of its members 
to teach or practice anything that his own 
conscience may permit. Modernists say that the 
Church has no right to take to account a member 
whose conscience may be so wide and flexible as to 
permit him to do that which is clearly contrary 
to his own good and the good of the Christian 
cause. 

In other words, modernism interprets the prin- 
ciple of liberty of conscience to mean religious 
individualism. This modern notion of liberty of 
conscience has, as already intimated, been as- 
cribed by liberalistic writers to the early Menno- 
nites. For example, in the circular letter sent by 
S. Burkhard to the Alumni of Goshen College, in 
March 1923, the following passage occurs: 


The present crisis of the college and the church 


82 MODERN PERVERSION OF LIBERTY 


at large involves two historic issues. The one is the 
cardinal doctrine which the church in its early his- 
tory made one of its chief foundation stones. it. is 
the doctrine of the right of one to live by the 
dictates of his own conscience. Today we are again 
facing this issue and are wondering whether the 
church will remain true to its historic foundations, or 
whether it will forget this cardinal doctrine and [re- 
fusing to give liberty on the points at issue] as a 
consequence divide itself into small and petty factions. 
This is obviously the modernist view of 
iiberty of conscience. And it is erroneously as- 
cribed to the fathers of the Mennonite Church. 
Giving this question a little thought will show 
that the modern view of liberty of conscience is 
the very opposite of the true view of religious 
liberty. An example may make this point clear. 
The Mennonite Church consists of persons who 
have united upon a creed concerning doctrine and 
practice. Unless you are a member only nominally, 
you believe in the doctrines and principles of the 
Church. Now suppose the case that a member 
turns Russellite (or modernist, as the case may 
be) and claims that according to the principle of 
liberty of conscience the Church cannot censure 
or exclude him. It seems almost impossible that 
such a claim could be seriously made. The fact 
is that to retain a Russellite as a member would 
be to burden the conscience of the loyal members 
of the Church. The Church could not with a good 
conscience grant such a thing. Unless the prin- 
ciple of liberty of conscience is nothing but a 
farce, it must give the Church the right to main- 
tain a clear conscience and to exclude the Rus- 


IS IT PERSECUTION? | 83 


sellite or the modernist. On the other hand, it 
would be absurd to say that leaving the Menno- 
nite Church would burden the Russellite’s con- 
science. If he desired to retain his membership it 
would probably be for the reason that he has more 
influence over Mennonites so long as he is a mem- 
ber of the Church, or because he has some other 
ax to grind. 

Modernism has developed a type of con- 
science that differs radically from the Christian 
conscience of the old heroes of the faith. In our 
day liberalistic professors who have discarded 
the Bible faith think, as a rule, that to ask them to 
resign their office in an orthodox church is to 
oppress. their conscience and to persecute them. 
When a number of years ago a minister in a prom- 
‘inent denomination offended his church by his 
new theology views, the opinion was_ publicly 
expressed that to ask him to resign his paying 
position would be a form of persecution, since 
he could probably not earn as much in another 
profession. On the other hand the mighty men of 
faith who defended the principle of religious 
freedom did not find it in their conscience to 
remain in a church from which they differed in 
faith; they withdrew, though to do so may have 
meant for them the most cruel persecution. 

S. Burkhard says in the letter quoted above: 

Yesterday our people died for their liberty of 
conscience, but today in turn we are telling our chil- 
dren that if they wish to remain in the church they 


must submit their consciences to the dictates of the 
‘authorities.’ The word ‘authority’ is a much over- 


34 “A GRAVEYARD OF CONSCIENCES” 


worked word in the circles of the church, and its 
administration often is a flat denial of the validity of 
the idealism for which we propose to stand. | . 

When once the ‘authorities’ of the church succeed 
in crushing out all liberty of conscience and thought, 
and have denied one the right of self-respect, and have 
taken away ones life (not physical) and have turned 
the college into a graveyard of consciences, then they 
will sncceed in crushing out all rebellion from the 
college, and there will be no spirit of revolt there, 
because there is no life. 

The spirit of revolt will always be found in a 
man when someone else is holding him down and deny- 
ing him the right of freedom and self-respect. 

Is this not strange language from a Menno- 
nite educator? And is not his position as regards 
the question of liberty of conscience unacceptable 
to thinking persons? The question regarding the 
influence of such Mennonite educators is a serious 
one. Could it be possible, we must ask, that our 
young people who are attending state schools are 
exposed to greater dangers than those who are 
sitting at the feet of a Mennonite professor who 
defines Mennonitism as liberty and uses language 
such as this writer regarding the Church? The 
often repeated claim of such men that it is their 
business to train the future leaders of the Church 
is significant. 


A Charge Against the Bishops 


In No. 6 of The Christian Exponent, J. E. 
Hartzler expresses the opinion that “overhead 
human authority” and “government by bishops” 
can not dwell under the same roof with freedom of 


DISCIPLINE NECESSARY 85 


conscience. If this view were correct, bishops 
would find themselves evidently in a serious pre- 
dicament. The constitution of practically all civil- 
ized countries guarantees liberty of conscience to 
every person, To take a position against freedom 
of conscience is to violate the Constitution of the 
United States. He who dares to do this makes: 
himself liable to prosecution. 

But on what ground is this charge made? 
Do the bishops of any church offend against the 
principle of liberty of conscience? Do they compet 
people to unite with the organization which they 
represent, or to remain in the church, against their 
own will? Not by any means. They do not inter- 
fere with any one’s religious liberty by “keeping 
house” in accordance with the creed and regula- 
tions of the Church. Enforcing church regula- 
tions is not contrary to the principle of liberty of 
conscience, else the churches which have no bish- 
ops and yet maintain proper discipline would of- 
fend against this principle the same as the churches 
that have bishops. The fact is that stricter order 
and discipline is maintained in certain denomina- 
tions having a strictly congregational polity than 
in some other churches that are ruled by bishops. 
The Methodists are an illustration to the point. 
Some of the smaller Methodist bodies, that have no 
bishops, as for example, the Primitive and Wes- 
leyan Methodists, maintain far stricter discipline 
than the Methodist Episcopal Church which is 
ruled: by bishops. 


ONG 
THE FAITH OF OUR FATHERS 


Under this heading J. E. Hartzler, President 
of Witmarsum Theological Seminary (formerly 
President of Goshen College) published two ar- 
ticles in The Christian Exponent. With reference 
to the faith of our Fathers he claims that there 
were “four fundamental principles which inspired 
them to action and which led finally to the es- 
tablishment of the Church.” Now of the four 
principles which this writer enumerates, three are 
merely interpretations of the principle of liberty. 
They are: The right of the interpretation of 
Scripture for any person; the right of liberty of 
conscience; and the right of religious toleration. 


While the said writer claims that of the four 
fundamental principles of Mennonitism three have 
to do with liberty or freedom, another Mennonite 
writer goes even farther. S. Burkhard says, in 
the letter mentioned before, that “the historic 
idealism of the Mennonite Church” is nothing 
more nor less than the assertion of the principle 
of liberty. This “historic idealism,’ he states, 
consists in upholding the two cardinal doctrines 
of liberty of conscience and nonresistance. The 
first of these doctrines he interprets to mean the 
autonomy of conscience, or the rejection of all 
authority higher than the individual self. 


Still more strange is his interpretation of the 


CURIOUS VIEW OF NONRESISTANCE — 87 


doctrine of nonresistance. He says this doctrine 
means more than that one should not take the 
life of another (which is, of course, true). He 
claims the meaning of the doctrine of nonresist- 
ance is that every one should be permitted to live, 
and to live as he may desire. He says nonresist- 
ance means that the Church must give every 
member the right to live as he may desire. He 
says further that the Church is violating the 
principle of nonresistance by setting up regulations 
and restrictions, Now this is a view of nonresist- 
ance that cannot be taken seriously. The opinion 
that such is “the historic idealism of the Menno- 
nite Church,” that is to say, this was the position 
of the Fathers of the Church, is absurd. 


Speaking of “the two historic issues” of the 
Church, this writer, thus, interprets the one (liberty 
of conscience) to mean that you insist on your 
own personal liberty; and the other (nonresistance) 
that you grant personal liberty to others. These 
two principles, he says, “form the heart and core 
of the religion of Jesus.’ All this means that in 
his view the cardinal doctrines of the Mennonite 
Church may be defined by one word: liberty. 


It cannot be denied that liberty is an import- 
ant factor in religious and moral endeavor. Yet 
liberty is of real value only as it presents oppor- 
tunity to pursue some worthy purpose. The 
Fathers of the Mennonite Church protested a- 
gainst the tyranny of those who denied them the 
right of liberty of conscience, the right to worship 
and live in accordance with their Christian con- 


88 LIBERTY A MEANS TO AN END 


viction. They did not appreciate liberty so much 
as an end in itself but rather as a means to a higher 
end. They were interested in liberty in so far 
as it would enable them to live the doctrine of 
Christ unmolested. They desired no other liberty. 
The cardinal principle of the Church is not liberty 
but it is to lay hold on God’s Word in simple 
faith and to order one’s life according to it. 


Modernism substitutes the principle of liberty 
for the fundamentals of the faith. It sets aside 
the faith once for all delivered to the saints and 
makes liberty the principal thing. It makes an 
idol of liberty. Christianity teaches that there 
is something higher than liberty. In fact, liberty 
as an end in itself, that is to say, if it has no 
religious or moral objective, is not true liberty, no 
more than that anarchy is political liberty. 


The Mennonites of Holland furnish an object 
lesson. About the year 1860 they began to drift 
into theological liberalism. ‘Today they are radi- 
cally modernistic. The general condition of the 
Mennonite Churches of Holland is sad indeed. To 
what length they go in the open denial of the 
faith is well-nigh unbelievable. A majority of 
their ministers do not believe that answer to 
prayer is possible. Now Professor Leuba, of 
Bryn Mawr College, who is an avowed unbeliever, 
classifies those who do not believe in a God 
who answers prayer as atheists, though they may 
profess faith in God. If his view is right, all who 
do not recognize the existence of a God who in 
His omnipotence can answer prayer, are to be 


MODERNIST MENNONITES 89 


classed with atheists. One of the smal] number of 
the more conservative Mennonite ministers of Hol- 


land mentioned recently in their church paper that 
a Mennonite minister had reproved one of his 
members for “saying grace” i. e. having prayer 
before meals. 


The principles held by the more advanced 
modernist Mennonites of America are fully ac- 
cepted and practiced by the Mennonites of Holland. 
They hold questions of faith and doctrine as strictly 
secondary matters on which they grant full liber- 
ty. In fact they stand for nothing else but liberty. 
They are identified with individualism which 
means that each individual is considered an author- 
ity unto itself and will recognize no other author- 
ity. They defend the autonomy of the individual. 
Each church member is to be governed by the 
rules that he may lay down for himself. The 
right of the Church to formulate such rules for 
the members is denied. The Church is not permit- 
ted to have any say in the point of faith of the 
church members, This means that these churches 
are like the most radical type of Unitarian church- 
es, or societies, in America. Like our Unitarians, 
they have no positive teachings except their posi- 
tive denial of the old Bible faith. And again 
they are like our Unitarians in spending their 
energies in their opposition to the Christian faith. 
As one of the Holland Mennonite ministers has 
said, “Our business is to fight orthodoxy.” They 
find themselves obliged to apply to the Menno- 
nites of other countries to assist them in the sup- 


90 FAILURE OF MODERNISM 


port of their missions, but at the same time the 
reports published in their church paper show that 
they give thousands of dollars for the strengthen- 
ing of modernism in Germany and Austria. In 
fact the principal modernist paper of Germany, 
Die Christliche Welt, would probably have ceased 
to exist were it not for the financial help of mod- 
ernists of other countries, and the Mennonites of 
Holland are among those whose aid has kept this 
paper alive. 

To return, after this digression, to our sub- 
ject: religious liberty, we shall quote one of the 
most prominent modernist Mennonite ministers of 
Holland, Ds. F. Dijkema, of Amsterdam, on the 
point in question. His statement is important 
showing, as it does, that the substitution of the 
principle of liberty for the Christian faith has 
proved a failure. This writer readily admits that 
modernism, having repudiated the authority of 
Scripture, is lacking a foundation and that, unless 
a foundation may be found for it, it has no future 
as a substitute for the Christian faith. He says: 

What the last half century has taught us is that 
the modernistic teachings did not show the vitality 
which we had expected them to have. And if we 
ask for the reason why we have been disappointed in 
our hope the answer is principally twofold: Modernism 
has found it impossible to create for itself a theologi- 
cal foundation; it has no unifying theology, no com- 
mon fundamental principle, and secondly the masses 
of the people have not been attracted by it; we did 


not succeed in the effort to interest them in the 
liberalistic teachings. 


We have no settled points of doctrine, but what 


MODERNISM WITHOUT A FOUNDATION 91 


do we have? Is there not more clearness of aim 
needed, a greater certainty than we now have? 


The question remains, Can there be found for 
modernism a positive fundamental principle? It has 
been supposed that the principle of liberty or freedom 
will serve this purpose. But, as Professor Opzoomer 
has recently said, “To be a Protestant it is not 
sufficient to have a zeal for liberty. It is true that 
the principle of faith loses its strength without the 
principle of freedom, but the principle of freedom 
is meaningless without the principle of faith.” Liberty 
is after all a negative conception and can therefore 
not be considered the common fundamental principle 
of the modernists. 


Professor Roessingh has shown that now, since 
the modernists have dropped the belief in an authori- 
tative divine revelation, they are lacking a foundation. 


Ve 
RESTRICTIONS 


We have seen that, in the view of modernist 
Mennonites, “the historic faith of the Church” of 
which they have so much to say, may be summed 
up in one word: liberty. If this were the correct 
view, it would follow that what is known as 
restrictions would be the greatest violation of 
Mennonite principle. 

From the earliest time the Mennonite Church 
has laid down certain restrictions — rules of 
conduct — that were obligatory for the members. 
These restrictions had reference to worldliness in 
general and to such points as dress, manner of 
life, worldly amusements, etc., in particular, If 
the church members were convinced Mennonites, 
they believed such restrictions to be a necessary 
characteristic of a true Christian Church. The cry 
that the restrictions are conflicting with the per- 
sonal liberty of those who were “set free” by 
Christ was in those early days raised, not by church 
members (who by their free choice had united 
with the Church) but by outside opponents of the 
Church and enemies of the cause. 

In our day there are those within the borders 
of the Church who have raised the fervent cry, 
“no restrictions.” An expression on this point is 
found in the letter mentioned in a previous para- 
graph which was sent by Samuel Burkhard, to 


ACCUSATIONS AGAINST CHURCH 93 


the Alumni of Goshen College. In this letter 
the words of Christ concerning the more abundant 
life, are quoted and it is claimed that this life 
cannot be lived under the restrictions imposed 
by the Church. With reference to these restric- 
tions the letter says: 

Many men and women have been denied the 
birthright for which their nature called because some- 
ene had forced upon them to live within a man-made 
cage. 

The writer of the letter set himself the task 
to show that to accept the said restrictions is 
contrary to the teachings of the Fathers of the 
Church. To quote again from the letter: 

The fathers of the Church revolted for the same 
reason that our young people are now in a spirit of 
revolt. 

Again J. E. Hartzler, in his article The Faith 
of Our Fathers, says with clear reference to these 
restrictions : 

Instead of making it impossible for our young 
people to stay in the Church, we must set in motion 
forces that will make it practically impossible for them 
to leave the Church. 

This is a most remarkable statement. It ‘is 
made by the president of the institution which 
claims to be the theological seminary, or ministers’ 
training school, of five branches of the Menno- 
nites, including our Church. The regulations in 
force in the Church, says this writer, compel 
our young people to leave the Church. Now 
these restrictions are upheld not merely by indi- 
viduals, or sections of the Church, but by the 
whole Church, as represented by our conferences. 


94 IS DRESS AN INDIFFERENT MATTER? 


It is not almost unbelievable that the President of 
the institution which claims to be the theological 
seminary of the Church has the courage to make 
such insinuations—that he comes out in what 1s 
nothing less than open revolt against the Church in 
which he also personally claims membership. It 
is safe to say that a parallel case can scarcely be 
found in history. And President Hartzler is evi- 
dently doing his best to lead our young people in 
the the way he has chosen. (Witmarsum Theo- 
logical Seminary, though located in Bluffton, Ohio, 
is not the same institution as Bluffton College.) 


The general position of Witmarsum Theological 
Seminary is clear from various expressions both 
written and oral of its president as well as of some 
of its professors. One of the latter has given grave 
offence in various places by his bold denial of the 
resurrection of Christ. Why are these things men- 
tioned here? Would it not be better to pass them 
over in silence? It would indeed be right to do so 
if the questions involved were not issues of life and 
death to the Church. The question of avoiding the 
displeasure of individuals must in such matters al- 
ways be a secondary consideration. If it is necessary 
to speak plainly concerning non-Mennonite modernist 
schools, it is even more needful to do so regarding 
Mennonite institutions. 


Those of our educators who are attempting to 
lead our young people in a revolt against the 
Church have asserted that dress is a matter that 
is religiously indifferent and the Church has no 
right to make rules in regard to it. They deny 


PETER CARTWRIGHT’S TESTIMONY 95 


that there is a close relationship between this mat- 
ter and Christian experience. This is indeed 
strange. Clearly it is easy to dress in a way that 
is inconsistent for a Christian professor. The early 
Christians, in accordance with Scripture teaching 
and principle, stood for simplicity of attire. And 
all churches that believed it to be the church’s 
calling to teach and testify against worldliness 
have generally followed their example on this 
point. 


To make clear the point of the original 
position of one of the larger denominations — 
the Methodists — on the question of worldliness, 
we shall quote from the writings of one of the 
Methodist pioneer preachers in the Middle West, 
Peter Cartwright. The following is taken from 
his autobiography, which he wrote when he was 
well advanced in years, in 1856. He says: 


I wish to say a few things here on the usages of 
the Methodist Episcopal Church. When I joined the 
Church, her ministers and members were a plain peo- 
ple; plain in dress and address. You could know a 
Methodist preacher by his plain dress as far as you 
could see him. The members were also plain, very 
plain in dress. They were not permitted to wear 
jewelry, or superfluous ornament, or extravagant dress 
of any kind, and this was the rule by which we 
walked, whether poor or rich, young or old. And 
although we knew then, well as we do now, that the 
religion of the Lord Jesus Christ does not consist in 
dress, or the cut of the garment, yet we then knew 
and know now that extravagant dress and superfluous 
ornaments engender pride, and lead to many hurtful 
lusts, directly at war with that humility and godly 


96 


A ZEALOUS CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 


example that becomes our relation to Christ, that sc 
preeminently becomes Christians. 


In another chapter Cartwright says: 

In these early days we had no pewed churches, 
no choirs, no organs; in a word we had no instrumen- 
tal music in our churches anywhere. The Methodists 
in that early day dressed plain, attended their meet- 
ings faithfully, especially preaching, prayer and class- 
meetings. They wore no jewelry, no ruffles. They 
would frequently walk three or four miles to class- 
meetings and home again, on Sundays. They would 
go thirty or forty miles to their quarterly meetings. 
They could, nearly every soul of them, sing our 
hymns and spiritual songs. The Methodists of that 
day stood up and faced their preacher when they 
sung; they kneeled down in the public congregations 
as well as elsewhere, when the preacher said, “Let us 
pray.” The abominable practice of sitting down 
during prayer was unknown among early Methodists. 
Parents did not allow their children to go to balls or 
plays; they did not send them to dancing schools. 
If Methodists had dressed in the same “superfluity 
of naughtiness’ then as they do now, there were very 
few even out of the church that would have any 
confidence in their religion. But O, how things have 
changed in this age of the world. I do declare there 
was little or no necessity for preachers to say any- 
thing against fashionable and superfluous dressing in 
those primitive times of early Methodism; the very 
wicked themselves knew it was wrong and spoke out 
against it in the members of the church. The moment 
we saw members begin to trim in dress after the 
fashionable world, we all knew they would not hold 
out. 

Again this writer says: 

On the other hand, if religion must be defeated, 
the obligations of the Gospel loosened, the rules of the 
Church not exacted, a time-serving ministry employed, 





AGAINST LUXURIOUS CHURCHES 97 


this is, and has been, the death-knell to all churches 
so far as inward piety is concerned. Look at the need- 
less, not to say sinful expenditures in older cities and 
districts of country; the unnecessary thousands ex- 
pended, not in building needful and decent churches, 
for this is right, but ornamented churches to make a 
vain show and gratify pampered pride. Look at the 
ornamented pulpits, pewed and cushioned seats, organs 
and almost all kinds of instruments, with salaried 
choirs, and as proud and graceless as a fallen ghost, 
while millions upon millions of our fallen race are 
dying daily and peopling the regions of eternal woe 
for the want of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

Having related a few instances of persons 
who laid aside superfluities of dress without being 
. asked to do so, when they were converted, Cart- 
wright says: 

I state these cases to show that unless the heart 
is desperately hardened through the deceitfulness of 
sin, there is a solemn conviction on all minds that 
fashionable frivolities are all contrary to the humble 
spirit of our Saviour. But idolatry is dreadfully 
deceptive, and we must remember that no _ idolator 
hath any inheritance in the kingdom of God. Let 
Methodists take care. 

If in the preceding paragraphs you substitute 
the word Mennonite for Methodist, you have a 
correct description of the early Mennonite con- 
gregations as concerns the point of unworldliness. 

What may be the cause for the departure of the 
Methodist Church from the original ground held 
on the point in question? The answer is, of course, 
that there was a lapse in spirituality. But this is 
not the whole reason. It is sometimes said that 
where true spirituality exists, rules and regulations 
in regard to this point are unnecessary, Yet, even 


98 WESLEY ON DRESS 


for spiritual persons it is not impossible to be led 
into error. The fact is that there are spiritually 
minded persons who counteract their good in- 
fluence by their worldliness. 

Some of the Methodist circles of England began 
to grow cold and drift into worldliness before the 
death of John Wesley. When well advanced in 
years Wesley realized that he might have stemmed 
the tide of worldliness in dress if he and his co- 
workers had laid down more defininte rules and 
restrictions on this point. An important expres- 
sion on worldliness in dress and its prevention 1s 
found in his sermons. He says in sermon 120, part 
12: ; 

I am distressed. I know not what to do. I see 
what I might have done once. I might have said 
peremptorily and expressly, “Here I am; I and my 
Bible. I will not, I dare not vary from this book, 
either in great or small. I have no power to dis- 
pense with one jot or tittle of what is contained 
therein. I am determined to be a Bible Christian, 
not almost but altogether. Who will meet me on this 
ground- Join me on this, or not at all.’ With regard 
to dress in particular, I might have been as firm 
(and I now see it would have been far better) as 
either the people called Quakers or the Moravian 
brethren; — I might have said, “This is our manner 
of dress, which we know is both Scriptural and ration- 
al. If you join with us, you are to dress as we do; 
but you need not join us unless you please.” But, 
alas! the time is now past; and what I can do now, I 
cannot tell.” 


In contrast with these sentiments of John 
Wesley we quote here from an article of N. E. 
Byers in The Christian Exponent, No. 10: 


‘ah 
7) 


STANDARD TO BE LOWERED? 99 


We have been more interested in conserving cus- 
toms and traditional beliefs than in getting insight into 
saving truth and giving it to the world. In our home 
mission work have we not put our effort on a fight to 
save man-made customs of dress at the sacrifice of the 
saving of souls and the Christianizing of communities? 


This question must be answered negatively. 
The fact is that our home missions have been suc- 
cessful in winning people for Christ. It is true 
that many of the converts were not willing to 
accept the restrictions asked by the Church. But 
discarding these restrictions would not remedy 
matters. If the Church would drop her unpopular 
teachings and regulations, there would be no 
good reason why we should desire converts to 
unite with our communion in preference to more 
popular churches. As for being interested in 
“traditional beliefs more than in getting insight 
into saving truth,” it must be said that the supposed 
new insight into saving truth at the expense of the 
so-called traditional beliefs is unacceptable to us. 


The quotation from John Wesley shows that 
he agreed with the position of the Mennonite 
Church on two important points: He considered 
principle of more importance than numbers (and 
yet he was a great missionary); and he believed 
the Church has the right to make regulations in 
regard to dress. This has always been the posi- 
tion of the Mennonite Church. Particularly in 
regard to the head dress of the sisters, the Church 
has always insisted. on uniformity. Until less 
than a century ago in all the Mennonite churches 
of Switzerland, France, Baden, Wurttemberg, 


100 AN INTERESTING TESTIMONY 


Bavaria and Hesse the bonnet which is used in 
the Sonnenberg Church in Ohio was in use. When 
the writer was a boy in his teens there were in 
our congregation near Wuerzburg in Bavaria a 
few sisters left who wore this headgear, while 
about a score of years earlier it had been obliga- 
tory to wear it. 


Ds. J. M. Leendertz, the Mennonite minister 
of Holland who visited the United States a few 
years ago, has written a pamphlet in the Dutch 
language on Mennonite life in America. It will 
be remembered that he is one of the most con- 
servative Mennonite ministers in his fatherland, 
yet he cannot be said to be conservative in the 
sense we are using the term. What he says on 
the point of restrictions is of particular interest. 
Having mentioned various regulations of the 
Church in America, he continues: 


But these Mennonite peculiarities are not without 
spiritual value. The young people, who are brought 
up under these strict rules, have a very real feeling 
that the Christian life imposes special obligations. 


I am in doubt that it was to the benefit of the 
spiritual life of the Mennonites of Holland that 
during the last century they were spared these diffi- 
culties (arising from the observation and enforcement 
of such strict regulations), and that the dividing line 
between them and the worldly life has been weli-nigh 
obliterated. I found among the American Mennonites 
a deep-rooted feeling of obligation toward God, a 
great moral and religious fervour, which is contin- 
ually nourished and kept alive by their attitude of 
separation from the world. 


ed 68 i | 
RELIGIOUS CERTAINTY 


It is a noteworthy fact that, as shown in the 
preceding paragraph, one of the liberal Menno- 
nites of Holland admits that modernist religion has 
no foundation. That religious liberals agree in the 
rejection of the authority of Scripture is generally 
known. Disowning the Scriptures as the final 
authority, they cannot consistently fall back on 
Scripture as an authority for the theology, or 
doctrine, which they may defend. 


Strange as it may seem, not a few of the 
modernist theologians have asserted that their 
theology really needs no foundation. They are 
of the opinion that there is no religious truth that 
can be proven or established. All religious truth, 
they say, is relative, or subjective, or individual- 
istic, which means that it is in fact not true, though 
for practical purposes it may be well to let it pass 
as acceptable. Modernists tell us that religious 
doctrine is to be used rather than accepted as true. 
Therefore the question of religious assurance is 
superfluous. There is indeed no occasion to speak 
of assurance with reference to a supposition that 
is not claimed to be true. Our Lord has said, 
it is foolish to build upon a foundation of sand, 
but what about those who are building without a 
foundation or, in other words, whose building is 
not real? 

Methinks some one will here raise the ques- 


102 SHOULD CHURCH ABANDON RELIGION? 


tion, Are you not overstating the case? Is it 
possible that modernists do not claim that the 
religious opinions which they defend are true. Do 
they really admit that those opinions are only 
suppositions that are serving a useful purpose? 
Can it -be that intelligent persons accept views 
which by their own advocates are not supposed to 
be true? To answer such queries we shall here 
quote a number of liberalistic writers on the point 
in question. 


Dean Fenn, of Harvard University, a radical 
Unitarian, points out that modernists are “per- 
fectly aware” that the liberalistic view of Jesus 
{denying His Deity) is incompatible with religious 
certainty and finality. “Liberalism can develop a 
conistently strong position,” said a speaker in a 
liberal religious congress, “only as a basis of faith 
shall be discovered.” Dr. William Adams Brown, 
foriner President of Union Theological Seminary, 
New York, has expressed the same opinion. Pro- 
fessor Gerald Birney Smith, of the University of 
Chicago, a prominent modernist leader, says the 
religious uncertainty that comes with the re- 
jection of the authority of Scripture, has become 
“a burden that is fast becoming unendurable.” In 
another instance the same author speaks of “the 
agony of uncertainty which is so prevalent in our 
day.” He says further: “Thoughtful men and con- 
scientious people are painfully aware that as yet 
nothing of a strong, positive. character has come 
to take the place of the older type of theology.” 
Professor Roy Wood Sellars, of the University of 


BUILDING WITHOUT FOUNDATION 103 


Michigan, known to be an outspoken atheist, says: 
“The church must give up the idea that it can teach 
final truth on any subject.” Therefore, so Professor 
Sellars argues, the church should leave religious 
questions alone. 


Clearly, then, the modernist religion is lacking 
the most important part, namely a foundation. 
Could there be a more striking evidence of its 
secondary non-vital character? And must it not 
be assumed that people wo do their own thinking 
will eventually realize the unreasonableness of 
such a theology? An American President is cre- 
dited with the saying that “you cannot fool the 
people all the time.” But some of the modernist 
theologians are seeking a foundation for their posi- 
tion. And what sort of a foundation do they seek? 
Evidently not one of supernatural character, for 
they, in principle, reject supernaturalism inclusive 
of divine revelation as given in Scripture. The at- 
tempt to find a foundation, outside of Scripture, 
for the shreds of Christian theology which they 
may desire to maintain, is evidently futile. Science 
is silent on the points in question. The hope 
that something may “turn up” which may serve 
this purpose is indeed pathetic. It reminds one of 
the story of the shepherd who went to a goldsmith 
to inquire concerning the value of a big lump of 
gold. Asked if he had one, he replied, no, but he 
hoped to find one, How strange that in an age 
which boasts of its enlightenment there are those 
who will accept a theology which its defenders 
are laboring to maintain without a foundation. 


XIX 
COMPROMISE 


The following passage is taken from the pre- 
viously mentioned article The Faith of Our Fa- 
thers, by J. E. Hartzler: 

There are two enemies at work today with the 
express purpose of eliminating this faith from the earth. 
The one is an unreasonable and unwise liberalism; and 
the second is an unreasonable and un-Christian con- 
servatism., 

This writer, then, favors a compromise be- 
tween liberalism and conservatism. What sort of 
a compromise he has in mind is evident from his 
expressions that have been quoted elsewhere. 
Now, in the opinion of the Fathers of the Menno- 
nite Church, compromise is one of the chief ene- 
mies of the Christian cause. 

It will be recalled that the early Mennonite 
Fathers originally started out on the same road 
as the leading reformers, Luther and Zwingli. 
But when these reformers, for reasons of ex- 
pediency and outward success, accepted a union 
of the church with the state, they consented to 
compromise a number of teachings that they had 
formerly defended, especially such as concern the 
ordinances and the principle of nonresistance. 
Consequently the fathers of the Mennonite Church 
saw themselves compelled to part company with 
them. (On the question of the original attitude 
of the leading reformers on the question of infant 


A POSITION OF NONCOMPROMISE 105 


baptism see the little book Infant Baptism, to be 
obtained from our Publishing House), 


It is worth noticing that while in our day the 
Church is bidden to compromise the fundamentals 
of the faith, such was not the case in those early 
days. The early Mennonites were asked by the 
most prominent Protestant leaders to enter into a 
compromise as concerned points of the ordinances, 
nonresistance, separation from the world, etc. Had 
they yielded these points, they would have avoided 
persecution. Believing the Scripture to be God’s 
Word, they were minded to abide by their teach- 
ings. They pointed out that to do less was (in 
the language of Menno Simons) “to regard God 
as a dreamer and His Word as a fairly tale.” 
Had the Fathers of the Church consented to com- 
promise, there would never have been a Menno- 
nite Church nor a single Mennonite martyr. While 
they counted not their own lives dear when loyal- 
ty to the Word was at stake, shall we compromise 
the fundamentals of the faith simply to please the 
world and a few anti-fundamentalist leaders? 

Some of our Mennonite educators protest 
against dogmatic teaching but, strange to say, 
they teach dogmatically that the early Mennonites 
were individualists and that therefore the modern- 
ists are their true followers, while the Mennonite 
Church has departed from the faith of the Fathers. 
Such is the teaching to which some of our Menno- 
nite young people are exposed today. There is 
no proof whatever for this modernist dogma. It 
is, by the way, a matter of regret that we do not 


106 IMPORTANCE OF CHURCH HISTORY 


have in any language a Mennonite history that 
gives information, with quotations from the origin- 
al sources, on these most important questions. A 
number of non-Mennonite scholars have pro- 
nounced the opinion that the Mennonites have the 
most interesting history. We have sadly neg- 
lected our own history. 


X X 
WHO ARE TRAITORS? 


In an editorial article published in The Chris- 
tian Exponent, fundamentalists are criticized for 
referring to modernists as “traitors.” This natur- 
ally raises the question, “Who is a traitor?’ A 
traitor, in the primary sense of the word, is a 
person who pretends to be a friend of the country 
in which he holds citizenship, but in reality gives 
aid to the cause of the enemies of the country. 
It is readily seen that the term traitor is properly 
applied to a modernist who attempts to hide his 
denial of Christian truth under the language of 
orthodoxy ; one who gives himself the appearance 
of a believer when in fact he represents the 
cause of modernism. It is a matter of common 
knowledge that a majority, perhaps, of modernists 
permit themselves to be guided by the time-serving 
principle that you must be careful in your state- 
ments as concerns your actual belief. You must 
hide your liberalistic position on points that con- 
cern the fundamentals, and must speak so ambig- 
uously that a Christian believer will never suspect 
that you disbelieve the fundamentals of the faith. 
This means that modernists, as a rule, consider 
their own faith of little consequence. If they be- 
lieved that their modernized faith is a thing of real 
value, as compared with the old Bible faith, 
should they not have the courage of their con- 


108 ADVISE TO “HEDGE” 


viction (if they hold their views from conviction) 
and freely proclaim their faith without dissimula- 
tion and hypocrisy? The fact is that such modern- 
ists show clearly that they consider their new 
faith as a matter of little consequence. They do 
not have sufficient faith in their faith to confess 
it. Has the world ever seen so weak a thing as 
this modernized faith? It consists in the last 
analysis of mere negations. 

The editor of The Christian Exponent men- 
tions in this connection the name of the modern- 
ist, Harry Emerson Fosdick, and his recent ex- 
pression on the subject of war, as an example of 
courage. He thinks the term traitor is misapplied 
with reference to such a man. However, it would 
obviously be difficult to find a more conspicuous 
example of a radical modernist masquerading un- 
der the guise of a Christian believer, than that 
of Harry Emerson Fosdick, He has written re- 
ligious books in which he is “hedging” to such 
extent that his modernism is hard to detect. His 
real colors he has shown in the published sermon, 
Can the Fundamentalists Win? Some of his mod- 
ernist friends, as represented in a certain commit- 
tee, have rebuked him for various statements made 
in that sermon, and have advised him to be more 
discreet and careful in the future. In a recent 
statement of his faith he is given to ambiguous 
terms to such extent that he was criticized even by 
Unitarians, 


X XI 
THE CHURCH AND HIGHER EDUCATION 


Education is development and training of the 
mind. It is storing the mind with facts and ideas 
and learning how to use them. Education in 
itself is religiously and morally indifferent. Its 
use will depend on the character of the person who 
has acquired it. You may be an exemplary Chris- 
tian and never have mastered your Grammar. 
Again there are those who are highly educated 
and do not have the wisdom to enter into the 
right relationship with God. Sometimes it is said 
that they who refuse “to become obedient to 
the Gospel” may be educated, but they are not 
educated in the right way. Yet a little reflection 
shows that salvation does not come by education 
but by faith and repentance and a consequent 
divine work of grace resulting in a change of heart. 


One of the prominent educators of America, 
Professor Nathaniel Butler, says: 


We live no longer in the expectation that the 
millennium will come through education. We once 
thought that if we were in condition to found good 
schools and to bring the boys and girls under the 
influence of a good education, we could finally put a 
stop to all unrighteousness and sin. But the fact of it 
is that education with reference to that point is a 
total failure. Men do not act according to their 
knowledge, but they do the things they love to do. 
It matters not how highly we may educate the under- 
standing, the man can, in spite of it, remain a slave to 
his passions. Mankind do not act according to their 


110 EDUCATION A TOOL 


best knowledge and wisdom, but do the things they 
love to do. While education of the intellect may cause 
its possessor to beware of the grosser sins, it, at the 
same time, may be only a means of making the man 
more cunning. 

While this is true, it is likewise true that 
education is or may be made a most useful tool 
for the Lord’s service. The Church needs her own 
schools for various reasons. ‘Though education 
in itself is morally and religiously indifferent, the 
character of the teacher, — whether or not he is 
a Christian, whether a believer in the old Bible 
faith or a modernist, — is by no means a matter 
of indifference. The relationship between the 
teacher and student is such that the personal 
influence of the teacher can hardly be overestimat- 
ed. Besides, the modernist teacher, with his pre 
judice against that which is supernatural; with 
his refusal to recognize Scripture as the final au- 
thority in all matters of which it treats, will in- 
variably make assertions regarding certain ques- 
tions of science, history, etc., that are mere un- 
proven theories and suppositions. A case to the 
point is the definition of “the historic faith of the 
Church” which some of our liberalistic Menno- 
nites have given. Along various lines unsupport- 
able theories have been taught and accepted as 
facts. 


The Mennonite Church has, in her endeavors 
in the way of higher education, encountered some 
rough waters. There were marked differences of 
opinion on various questions between those who 
were in immediate charge of our oldest institution 


CHURCH A SERVANT OF SCHOOLS? i111 


of higher learning and the Church, as represented 
by the Mennonite Board of Education. 

About a year ago, N. E. Byers, Dean of 
Bluffton College, had an article on higher education 
in The Christian Evangel, the church paper of the 
Central Illinois Conference of Mennonites, In this 
article are found a number of statements that will 
go far to explain the cause of the difficulties which 
this writer had, as President of Goshen College, 
with the Mennonite Board of Education. Hav- 
ing referred to Menno Simons’ appreciation of 
education, if it is used to the glory of God, he 
says: 

It is, however, true that churches have been in- 
clined to subordinate the interests of the individual to 
that of the church, and so have at times been a hin- 
drance to true education. It has always been true that 
institutions [such as the church] tend to become an 
end in themselves and thus become a burden rather 
than a help to man. As a result of this tendency in 
the past it has often been true that real progress in 
education was made only when it was taken out of the 
church. 

These sentences will bear a second reading. 
Clearly the meaning is that the interests of the 
Church are of less importance than the interests 
of the individual and of education. In other 
words, in the opinion of the writer of this article, 
the Church should not be looked upon as an end 
in itself; she should not merely be interested in 
education to the extent that education is serving 
her purposes, but the cause of education should be 
considered superior to the cause of the Church. 
This means that in the view of the same writer, 


112 THE HIGHEST CAUSE 


the Church exists for a higher end and this end 
is education. The context shows that the writer 
here speaks of higher education and this, after 
all, is the privilege of comparatively few individuals, 
and he tells us that the interests of individuals should 
supersede those of the Church. 


Menno Simons defines the church as the as- 
sembly of those who hear, believe, accept, and 
rightly fulfill the teachings of the Word. The 
church, in so far as it rightfully bears its name, 
is spoken of in Scripture as the body of Christ. 
The church is His bride who, under the leading 
of the Holy Spirit, is representing Him on earth 
and carrying on His work. The cause of the 
Church is the cause of the kingdom of God. There 
is no higher cause. The Church is an end in itself 
in so far as it is the body of Christ or, in other 
words, as it measures up to the Scripture stan- 
dard. To say that the interests of individuals and 
of education are of more importance than the inter- 
ests of the church is to make a statement that 
would have been shocking to the fathers of the 
Mennonite Church, if in their day some one would 
have made so unreasonable an assertion. It is a 
statement that is inspired by modernist idealism. 


The Mennonite view of the Church is ex- 
pressed in various places in the writings of the 
early Mennonites. In present-day literature some 
notable expressions are found in our hymns. We 
sing, for example: 

I fove thy kingdom, Lord, 
The house of thine abode— 


IS RELIGION THE HIGHEST CAUSE? 113 


The Church our blest Redeemer saved 
With His own precious blood. 

I love thy church, O God, 
Her walls before thee stand, 

Dear as the apple of thine eye, 
And graven on thy hand. 


For her my tears shall fall, 
For her my prayers ascend; 
To her my cares and toils be giv’n 
Till toils and cares shall end. 
Beyond my highest joy 
I prize her heav’nly ways, 
Her sweet communion, solemn vows, 
Her hymns of love and praise. 


The Mennonite Church has always held that 
the Church, in so far as it measures up to the 
Scripture standard, is an end in itself, as already 
intimated. In other words, there is no higher end, 
no higher cause, than that of the Church of Jesus 
Christ. But the writer quoted above expresses the 
opinion, that the interests of the Church should be 
subordinated to the interests of individuals, and 
of education. Evidently in his view education 
should be considered the principal task of the 
Church. 

And what, in the said writer’s opinion, would 
be the duty or task of the Church in the way of 
higher education? We shall let him speak for 
himself in reply to this question. He says in the 
article mentioned above, published in The Chris- 
tian Evangel: 

To do all this work so as to give it prestige 


that will not only commend it to our young people, 
but also have influence in the educational world, we 


114 ANOTHER GOSPEL 


must give our colleges the financial support needed 
for the highest type of work. Our teachers must 
have the means to study, travel, do research work, 
and secure libraries, and be unhampered by financial 
worries in order to do this highest grade of service. 
We cannot depend upon men of independent means to 
do all this work. A good example of what a people 
really devoted to such a cause really can do, is shown 
in the history of Haverford College. This institution 
is controlled by a group of only forty-five hundred 
conservative orthodox Quakers, and is not much older 
than some of our Mennonite Colleges and yet they 
have a fine campus and equipment and an endowment 
fund of over three million dollars. As a result they 
have a small college recognized by all Educators as 
one of the strongest in America. Consequently, what 
they do there may influence higher education in gener- 
al. 


This is an expression of the first president of 
our college in Indiana on the question, what kind 
of a school it would be desirable for us to have. 
Obviously in his capacity as president of this in- 
stitution he finally lost the hope of procuring 
sufficient support to make Goshen College such 
an institution. He consequently conceived of the 
idea of accomplishing this purpose by establishing 
a school by the cooperation of practically all 
Mennonites of America. Hence he went to Bluff- 
ton, Ohio, to undertake, with the help of others, 
to make of Bluffton College what for lack of sup- 
port he failed to accomplish in Goshen. It is the 
former president of Goshen College who is prin- 
cipally responsible for the existence of the insti- 
tution in Bluffton in its present form. Bluffton 


THE CHURCH’S CALLING 115 


College was formerly a school of the General 
Conference Mennonites only. 


The question may here be raised, what would 
have been the result, the practical consequences, 
if the attempt to develop one of our institutions 
into a school such as described above would have 
been successful? Let us see. 

In the first place we should notice that there 
is nothing whatever in Scripture to justify an 
endeavor on the part of the Church to establish a 
school with the aim of “influencing higher educa- 
tion in general.” And it cannot be supposed that 
even Haverford College is measuring up to such a 
standard, though a professor here has all oppor- 
iunity for study and travel, drawing a salary of 
at least five thousand dollars a year. The church 
cannot compete with the state and with worldly 
corporations on the field of higher education, at 
Jeast not a numerically weak body such as the 
Mennonite Church. To attempt such a thing 
would be uncalled for and unwise. It could not 
help but spell disaster for the Church, Why? 
Simply because the motive prompting the Church 
to such an undertaking would not be in accord to 
the trust committed to her. 

To undertake such a thing would be incom- 
patible with the calling of the Church. If the 
Church would bend her energies upon establishing 
a great institution to influence higher education 
in general, instead of giving the Gospel to a sin- 
sick world, this would be a plain indication that 
through worldly ambition she is fallen from her 


116 HAVERFORD COLLEGE 


first estate and is no longer the bride of Him 
whom the world rewarded with a crown of thorns. 
The doctors who prescribe education as the means . 
of salvation for the world are preaching “another 
gospel.” Modernistic idealism is not Christianity 
though it come under a Mennonite cloak. Incom- 
paratively great strides have been made in the 
world in the way of education, yet the nature of 
the world remains the same. The Church is in- 
terested in education, not as an end in itself, but 
in so far as it may be a means for advancing the 
cause of the Gospel. 


The same writer says that Haverford College 
is controlled by a group of conservative, orthodox 
Quakers. A little investigation will show this. to 
be incorrect. If the men who control this college 
are conservatives, then there is no such thing as 
modernism. They are in fact outspoken modern- 
ists. One fact must suffice as evidence. Recently 
the income of one of the endowments of this 
college has been used to produce a book that is 
radically liberalistic. Out of this endowment a 
number of men, including some Haverford pro- 
fessors, have been paid for writing articles on 
various topics. These articles have been published 
in a book under the title Religious Foundations. 
The book is highly recommended by modernist 
writers. The church paper of the Unitarians came 
out with a review under the significant heading 
An Antidote to Fundamentalism. The book is 
ommended by liberalists for use in modernist propa- 
ganda. 


MESSAGE OF THE CHURCH 117 


It is true that in the eyes of the world, in the 
view of the worldly minded, the interests of an 
institution like Haverford are of more importance 
than the interests of the Church. But to con- 
sider her interests inferior to those of individuals 
and of education and exert her energies in main- 
taining an institution such as described, with the 
aim of “influencing education in general,” would 
be for the Church to sell her birthright for a mess 
of pottage. Not that education is to be discounted. 
Let the Church use it as it may serve her purposes, 
but the Church is not here for the sake of it. Our 
schools are here to serve the purposes and safe- 
guard the interests of the Church; they are the 
servants of the Church and of the kingdom of 
God. 


Jesus Christ “loved the Church and gave Him- 
self for it,’—-He did not consider His own inter- 
ests of more importance than those of the Church, 
though He had great reason to do so, If He had 
believed that the interests of the Church should 
be subordinated to those of education, He would 
probably have gone to Athens, the great intellect- 
ual center of the world, to become the leading 
educator and bring to Himself glory before the 
wise of this world. He gave His life and His 
blood on the cross for the Church. His message 
is one of redemption from sin and eternal sal- 
vation. His true bride will not betray her great 
trust, even though the Gospel is unpopular in the 
eyes of the world and of modernist idealism. It 


' 


418 MODERNIZATION OF CHURCH 


“does not behoove the bride of Christ to lust after 
‘vain worldly glory. 

So soon as the Church considers her own in- | 
~terests of less importance than the interests of 
‘education, just so soon she may be sure to be 
Yed astray by education. It cannot possibly be 
otherwise. And obviously only a worldly, modernist 
church will consent to such a thing. 

The fact deserves notice that those who con- 
sider the Church merely the servant of the schools, 
would abolish certain doctrines and regulations of 
the Church. The obvious reason is that an ortho- 
dox church will not accept the viewpoint of these 
men and hence will not support schools such as 
they desire. They consider religious doctrine as 
a secondary matter and are interested in religion 
principally for the reason and to the extent that 
religion (the Church) supports their educational 
undertakings. 


XXII 


GOSHEN COLLEGE FORMERLY AND NOW 


S. Burkhard, a prominent alumnus of Goshen 
College, who has held professorships in Menno- 
nite colleges says in the letter to the Alumni of 
Goshen College, that was mentioned before: 

The mission of Goshen College is not to teach 
either a liberal or conservative theology. In and of 
themselves no systems of thought are large enough to 
encircle the whole of life. Some men can honestly 
live best within a conservative system of thought 
and others just as honestly must have a more liberal 
system. “In my Father’s house are many mansions.” 
The mission of Christian education is not to become 
a partisan to any system of thought. 

_ The letter from which this quotation is taken 
was, of course, sent out on the personal responsi- 
bility of the writer, though he may have had the 
assistance of others in preparing it. Yet the letter 
is a document of some importance. N. E. Byers, 
in the before mentioned circular letter, says he 
has read the letter and also the many replies 
the writer of it received. The writer himself in 
his second letter speaks of a great number of re- 
plies. It is widely known that various similar 
statements were made by other representatives of 
this institution who admitted that it was in their 
opinion not the mission of the college to teach 
conservative theology. It is known to all who 
were acquainted with actual conditions prevailing 


120 TRUTH OR USEFULNESS? 


in Goshen College that this sentiment was shared 
by the two first presidents of the college and by 
most of the teachers in the Biblical or theological 
department. Even some of the more conservative. 
Bible teachers held modernized views. They were 
trained in liberalistic institutions and would not 
admit that there is a vital difference between the 
liberalistic and conservative theology. Though 
they were careful in their expressions with refer- 
ence to the points at issue, some of them repeatedly 
made statements which any modernist would re- 
cognize as liberalistic, yet when they were ques- 
tioned, they never admitted such a thing. They 
seemed to have unlearned the art of speaking 
plainly, without ambiguity, on the most vital 
points. They determinately refused to approve of 
the anti-modernist attitude of the Church. They 
refused to loyally support the Church and to re- 
cognize her right to define her own principles, doc- 
trines and regulations. Their attitude was that the 
position of the Church was unacceptable to them. 


For a few years the Theology of William 
Newton Clarke, a modernist theologian, was used 
as a text book. There was a lack of positiveness 
on the part of the teachers. On the whole, Chris- 
tian doctrine was not treated as dogma founded 
on the infallible Word of God, but as human 
opinion in which every one could follow his own 
choice. There seemed to be a desire to develop 
in the student a tendency, as William Herbert 
Hobbs says, “to see both sides of every question 
and actually to be proud of never reaching a 


DEMAND FOR LOYAL SCHOOL 121 


definite decision as to which side was wrong and 
which right.” Undoubtedly this would be the 
right position if we had not in the Scripture an 
authoritative divine revelation. 


It may be recalled that Professor Albrecht 
Ritschl, the founder of the modernist theology, 
taught that there is no such thing as religious 
certainty. He held that, as concerns a given 
doctrine, the question is not whether it is true but 
whether it is useful. He shifted the issue from the 
truth of a doctrine to that of its value, or useful- 
ness. Yet there are those who, in spite of the 
scorn of the world, continue to hold fast to the 
old-fashioned principle that truth is of more value 
than other values, 


The Goshen Daily News-Times in an editorial 
article published less than a year ago, speaks of 
the cause of the difficulty between the Mennonite 
Board of Education and some of our’ educators. 
The editor says correctly that the immediate 
cause is to be sought in an effort, on the part of 
the Board, “to convert the college into an insti- 
tution where teaching the tenets of religious faith 
will be a dominant factor.” In other words, the 
Board insisted that the school should be conducted 
in harmony with the principles and regulations of 
the Church in order to serve the purpose for which 
it was established and maintained. 

Now, in a circular letter written by N. E. 
Byers, dated May 15, 1923, the assertion is made 
that “the leaders on the present Board are not 
capable of properly conducting our educational 


122 UN-MENNONITE VIEWPOINT 


work.” Again, the members of the Board of Edu- 
cation are referred to in the same letter as “sincere 
but blind leaders.” These statements throw an 
interesting light on a situation that existed for a 
long period. For fifteen years the brethren in the 
Board exercised patience and forbearance toward 
one who refers to them in such terms as quoted 
above. 


The cause of the difficulty obviously lies in 
fundamental differences of viewpoint between the 
Board and the former president of the said in- 
stitution. The Mennonite Board of Education 
stands for the principle that there are no higher 
interests than those of the Church and that the 
schools .are maintained for the sake of the cause 
of the Church. The Board, to repeat the language 
of the paper mentioned in a previous paragraph, 
takes the position that “the teachings of the tenets 
of religious faith should be the dominant factor,” 
and the institution should serve the purposes of the 
Church. The president of the institution, on the 
contrary, claimed that the Board did not represent 
true Mennonitism, while he and the school stood 
for “the historic principles of the Church.” He 
took the position that on the question of true 
Mennonitism he could speak more authoritatively 
than the Conferences and Boards. The question 
also, what the products of a Mennonite college 
should be like, he believed he could answer better 
than the Church. The fact is that he did not 
consider the question from a Mennonite viewpoint 
at all, but from the point of view of modernistic 


A CALL TO REVOLT 123 


idealism as held forth in many American institu- 
tions, notably Harvard University where he has 
been a student. Fiom this viewpoint it matters 
little for what dectrine the Mennonite Church or 
any other church may stand, so long as the Church 
is willing to make education her highest end. 


The opposition on the part of the first presi- 
dent of Goshen College and others to making Go- 
shen College a Mennonite institution (as Menno- 
nitism is defined by the Conferences and Boards 
of the Church) was very determinate and did not 
cease when these men severed their connection 
with Goshen College. The repeatedly mentioned 
letter by S. Burkhard calls upon the students and 
alumni to rise in revolt against the attempt to 
make Goshen College an institution meeting the 
demands of the Church. He says that to submit 
to the Church would be the end of “the idealism 
of our historic foundations.” He says further: 

Unless the church will change its attitude toward 
an energetic young people and their education, there 
will always be unrest. When once the “authorities” 
[of the Church] succeed in crushing out all liberty 
of conscience and thought, and have denied one the 
right to self-respect, and have taken away one’s life 
(not physical) and have turned the collegg into a 
graveyard of consciences, then they will have succeeded 
in crushing out all rebellion from the college, and there 
will be no spirit of revolt there because there is no 
life. If this comes to pass, how dare we look into the 
face of our Master who said: “I have come that ye 
might have life, and that ye might have it more 
abundantly.” 


It is shocking that even the name of Christ 


124 PRE-EMINENCE OF SPORT 


is used and His words quoted as favoring a revolt 
of our young people against the Church. His 
words concerning the more abundant life have been 
repeatedly used in a way that is nothing less than 
sacreligious. 


It may be worth noticing that one of the 
points at which the writer of the said letter is 
finding fault with the Board of Education is their 
decided stand against intercollegiate competitive 
athletic games, The Board would not represent 
the Church if it approved of such games. Neither 
are the conservative Mennonite people standing 
alone in their declining attitude on this point: 
The following is a pertinent expression from Pro- 
fessor James Taft Hatfield, of Northwestern Uni- 
versity, as published in a weekly paper. 


We have abdicated our high mission to college 
athletics. The whole spirit of the institution centers 
in a small band of highly specialized, husky sport- 
giants. That a center of higher learning should support 
such a college of gladiators is no more defensible, in 
strict logic, than the maintaining of a-stud of racing- 
horses. A stadium where the games are held, costing 
$2,000,000 implies interest charge of at least $100,000 
a year for the orgiastic spectacles; their delirious in- 
fluence swamps the whole concern, like a mad, big- 
eared African elephant smashing through a missionary’s 
prayer meeting. The finer values have about as fair 
a fighting chance to survive as a snowball in the Sa- 
hara. 


And so, looking back on a long educational career, 
I feel that we suffer from an appalling waste of fine 
resources; we lack leadership toward the true values 
of living; we are asphyxiated with worldliness. 


LIBERALISM AND MISSIONS 125 


In a weekly paper of a certain Mennonite college 
athletics is the dominant interest. This is the rule 
in fashionable higher institutions of learning. 

The writer of the above mentioned letter says 
further: 

Goshen College has been the institution that has 
furnished most of our missionaries for India and 
South America. Does the Board of Education also 
want to issue the death warrant, for these mission 
stations in the name of the will of the church? 

It is true that most of our missionaries have 
studied at Goshen College. Goshen was until 
more recently our only institution offering a com- 
plete college course and the school was older and 
better equipped than our other schools. To speak 
intelligently on the point raised in the above quo- 
tation it would be necessary to ascertain how many 
of our missionaries, that attended Goshen College, 
had decided to take up mission work before they 
went to Goshen. Again we should want to know 
kow many of our young people felt a call for ™ 
mission work before they attended college and 
changed their minds while they were students. 

To persons who do their own thinking it is 
clear that the liberalistic attitude of Goshen can 
not be given credit for the large number of mis- 
sionaries. To test modernism as to its effective- 
ness on this line, it would be necessary to work 
with young people that were brought up under 
modernist influences, in liberalistic families. Take 
a college that stands for the same “historic ideal- 
ism” for which Goshen College until recently stood 
and that has for its students young people coming 


126 RELIGION TO BE LIBERALIZED 


from homes in which liberalistic influences pre- 
vail, and then see how many of such students 
will become foreign missionaries. The fact is that 
there are schools of this description, having stu- 
dents from modernist homes. It is extremely 
difficult to persuade such young people to join any 
church, whether modernist or evangelical, and 
the percentage of such students taking up re- 
ligious work of any kind is negligible. This is an 
interesting study in itself. Only a few facts 
can here be given. 


As already said, children brought up in liber- 
alistic homes and educated in liberalistic schools 
are exceedingly difficult to win for any church. 
Only a small percentage of them will unite with 
the liberalistic church of their elders. The mem- 
bership of the Unitarian Church, for example, 
recruits itself principally, in some sections almost 
wholly, from the ranks of the more conservative 
churches, that is to say from those who have been 
won for Christianity through evangelical influences 
but have made shipwreck of faith. The cause for 
this interesting fact is incidentally given by Pro- 
fessor Edward Caldwell Moore, of. Harvard Uni- 
versity, as follows: 

The true course is apparently to have religion 
and then to liberalize it. It is seemingly futile to have 
liberalism and then seek to inject religion into it. 

In other words: If you desire that young 
people embrace religion, do not have them brought 
up in liberalistic homes or preach to them liberal- 
ism, for if they become liberalistic in thought, 


TWO SCHOOLS COMPARED 127 


you will find it difficult to arouse in them a real 
religious interest. But after they have become 
religious through conservative influences, you may 
win them for modernism and still hope that they 
will remain religious and be willing to take upon 
themselves the duties of membership in a liberalis- 
tic church. 


Professor Douglas C. Macintosh, of Yale 
University, says similarly, liberalism “is much 
more efficient in conserving the faith of modern- 
minded men who are already Christian” than it 
is in the endeavor to lead non-Christians to regard 
Christianity as even probably true. This is an ac- 
knowledgment of the fact that persons brought up 
in liberalistic circles are admittedly difficult to 
win for a liberal church. Though such young 
people are liberalists, they evidently fail to see 
sufficient reason for the existence of the liberalistic 
church. Also, of the very small number of students 
in Unitarian theological seminaries only a minor- 
ity is of Unitarian parentage, 

The Mennonites in Holland, though they have 
their own theological seminary, had in forty years 
not a single missionary come from their own mem- 
bership. 


N. E. Byers says in the circular letter men- 
tioned before that, as concerns the historic ideals 
for which Goshen College stood, these ideals are 
realized more fully in Bluffton College than they 
were in Goshen. If this be true and such ideal- 
ism is to be given credit for the number of 
missionaries which attended Goshen, it follows 


128 FORMIDABLE AGENCIES OF EVIL 


that the number of missionaries from Bluffton 
College would be even larger than of those from 
Goshen. The quotations from the letter follow 
without further comment. 


The progressive group at Goshen and the Bluff- 
ton Union group are so similar in their aims and needs 
that it will be for the mutual benefit of all to combine 
resources, faculty, student body and alumni to build 
up a strong college. 

While Goshen College for the present seems dead 
I think we can say that really Goshen has started 
rebuilding at Bluffton. Goshen supporters have always 
had three representatives on the Bluffton Board. At 
present there are seven former Goshenites on the faculty, 
and three others have put in two or more years each 
on the faculty. Some who had prominent positions on 
the Goshen faculty hold similar positions at Bluffton. 
Because of these facts I think we can say that a Goshen 
greater in possibilities than the first has been started 
at Bluffton with the cooperation of others with very 
similar aims, so that now, in the providence of God, 
our real cause can move forward unhindered. 

I feel that I know our young people well enough 
to be sure that many of them will see this larger cause 
and will rally to it. They were loyal to Goshen when 
they could not have the college they wanted, so I am 
sure they will be happy in a college which is in most 
respects all they have longed for and at the same time 
they can retain the unity of their group. 


_ The closing of our oldest and largest colldse 
for a year has by many persons been considered a 
curious thing. Such a thing had never been 
heard of before. Many Christian denominations 
of America have witnessed their colleges and 
theological schools being slowly but surely con- 
quered by modernism. This has resulted in con- 


MODERNIST INSTITUTIONS 129 


ditions that are unspeakably sad. The institutions 
in which the ministers of various denominations 
are educated have become hotbeds of modernism. 
Now a more formidable agency of evil, a more 
effective tool in the hands of the enemy, than such 
church schools cannot be named. The said de- 
nominations take the attitude that they need 
the higher institutions of learning even if they 
prove disloyal. There were protests against the 
modernism of their schools but this, as a rule, 
made no impression on those in charge of the 
professorships. 

Our Board is led by the conviction that, im- 
portant as educational institutions are, the Church 
eannot support schools that fail in loyalty to the 
Church, fail to safeguard our young people against 
dangers in evidence in other schools. A church 
schoo] taking an attitude of defiance against the 
Church forfeits its right to exist. Though to close 
the institution, in order to build from a new foun- 
dation, was an unpopular, unmodern thing, yet in 
all probability an action that is more characteristi- 
cally Mennonite, more perfectly in harmony with — 
the spirit of the Mennonite Fathers was never 
taken by the Church. 


Arrangements have been made for the open- 
ing of Goshen College with a full college course. 
The President of the college is well-known to the 
Church at large and has the confidence of the 
Church. His position as regards the points at 
issue is above question. The Dean also who re- 
ceived his training in a conservative theological 


130 LOYAL ATTITUDE 


institution, may be relied upon to champion the 
doctrines for which the Mennonite Church stands. 
They are convinced, with the heads of our other 
schools, that scholarship and the old Bible faith 
are not antagonistic to each other and what has 
been done by some other denominations in the 
way of maintaining fully accredited colleges that 
take a definite conservative position as to the 
fundamentals and serve the cause of the church, 
can be done by the Mennonites. We feel that the 
Church may safely entrust the school to their 
hands and that the institution will be maintained 
in a way calculated to be of real service to the 
Church. Doubtless there will be problems, local 
and general, that will involve difficulties but we 
may be sure that the foundation is true. Let us, 
who believe in prayer, not forget Goshen College. 
There is no more valuable service that we may 
render. 


Awe LAP 


THE CHRISTIAN EXPONENT 


Various quotations have been given from The 
Christian Exponent. The following sentence from 
an editorial article shows the eencrAl attitude and 
aim of this paper. 

To our sorrow and shame it must be admitted 
that as a church we have during these past few years 
been drifting more and more into two groups, each 
opposed to the other. 

No one doubts the statement that two groups 
exist, though it would be more correct to say 
that a small group has risen besides the great 
body of the Church. This group, being of recent 
origin, has accepted the leadership of a few men 
who claim that the Church, as represented by our 
conferences, does not stand for true Mennonitism. 
These men take the position that the Church is not 
well informed on the question wherein Menno- 
nitism really consists. They advance the view that 
the early Fathers of the Church held a position 
which is practically identical with modernism. 
The position of these men is one of anti-funda- 
mentalism while the Church holds a strong anti- 
modernist position. They are out of sympathy with 
the anti-modernism of the Church. It is these men 
that have called The Christian Exponent into 
existence. The assertion of the editor that this 
paper does not stand for any particular group is 
unacceptable. The publishers and editors of this 


132 TWO GROUPS 


paper are almost exclusively Goshen College alumni 
and former professors. The starting of the paper 
shows that they believed the time for a more 
aggressive attitude against conservative Menno- 
nitism as represented by our conferences and 
leaders had come, 

It is important to notice that evidently most 
of those who show an inclination to follow the 
way pointed out by the leaders in this group, are 
not fully aware of the real issues involved. Small 
as this group is, there is reason to believe that 
it would be far’ smaller, if it had been generally 
known that the principal leaders hold modernized 
religious views and consider questions of theology 
and creed as of secondary importance. 

Evidently the expression that to our shame 
we have lost our unity and drifted into two groups 
has necessarily one of two meanings. It means either 
that the liberals are to be blamed for failing to win 
the whole Church for modernized religious views and 
thus to maintain unity; or it means that it is to 
our shame that the conservative Church declines 
to follow the leadership of the said few men into 
an attitude of anti-fundamentalism. It is clear 
that only in either one of these two ways could the 
drifting into two groups be avoided. 

Without question The Christian Exponent, 
being the mouthpiece of the one group, takes the 
second of these views. In the same article the 
editor says: | 

Another phase of the problem is that so far as any 


official bodies are concerned, there has been no conflict 
to speak of. At the last General Conference all seemed 


MENNONITES ARE CONSERVATIVE 133 


harmonious...... Only one group is in evidence. — Un- 
less we are willing to hear each other and to give to 
others the same privileges and rights which we expect 
ourselves, we can hardly be said to have done our part 
in securing a proper understanding and solution of our 
problem. , 

In other words, it is the editor’s opinion that 
the group which he represents should be granted 
equal rights and privileges with those who stand 
loyally for the doctrines and regulations of the 
Church. The question is, Could the Church grant 
such a desire? It is a matter of general knowledge 
that our bishops and leaders have been harshly 
censured and accused for taking an unyielding at- 
titude toward modernism in its various phases. 


Now viewing the question from the stand- 
point of the Mennonite faith and principles, it is 
clear that it would mean a calamity to the Church 
if our leaders were taking another attitude in the 
issues involved. And suppose the case that at this 
time of crisis the Church had leaders that yielded 
to the spirit of the age, such leaders could ob- 
viously not hope to win the Church as a whole for 
modernism. Only to the extent that they might 
succeed in keeping the real issue from the people, 
(or, in plain English, in winning the people by 
underhanded, deceptive methods) would they 
stand a chance to get the conservative Mennonites 
to follow them in the way of modernism, and it 
cannot be supposed that such leaders would find 
it possible to modernize the church as a whole in 
such a way. There would doubtless be many who 
would see the issue clearly and, instead of fol- 


134 MODERNIST BOOKS 


‘owing such leaders, would decide to “go out from 
“among them and be separate.” It follows therefore 
that even if the Church at the present time had 
‘unfaithful leaders who acted on the principle that 
‘creed and doctrine are of only secondary import- 
ance (which is the most fundamental principle of 
Ynodernism), such an attitude on the part of the 
leaders would not have prevented the Church 
from drifting into two groups. The question is, 
Can the conservatives be blamed for their loyalty 
to their conviction, or is the blame for the existence 
of two groups to be ascribed to the rise of a new 
party? 

It is a significant fact that some of the books 
the readers of The Christian Exponent have been 
advised to read defend modernism. The book, Lay | 
Religion, by H. T. Hodgkin, is reviewed in No. 2 
by one of the editors. It is warmly recommended. 
A more dangerous book would be hard to find. 
The author frankly denies the fundamentals of the 
faith, A number of rankly liberalistic statements 
from this book are quoted in the book Modern 
Religious Liberalism. 

The book Things Fundamental, by C. E. Jef- 
tferson, is advertised and recommended in No. 8 
of The Christian Exponent. This book in one of 
a most dangerous type. Besides containing much 
that is unobjectionable it defends the most serious 
errors. The author does not believe that the op- 
portunity to be saved ends with death. He gives 
strange definitions of the doctrine of inspiration. 
The Bible, he claims, is not God’s Word (page 


NOT A PERSONAL MATTER 135 


134). He speaks of the doctrine of verbal in- 
spiration as “a silly superstition, a veritable rep- 
tile in the garden of the Lord.” “Because of 
this dogma of inspiration,’ he says, “Christianity 
in the popular mind has been arrayed against 
science’ (page 121). The first chapters of Gene- 
sis, he believes to be not history but fable. 


It is to be remembered that the question 
regarding the nature and tendency of The Chris- 
tian Exponent must be kept separate from the 
question of the motives and sincerity of the edi- 
tor. Without question, a man may be in error and 
sincerely believe that he is right. It would be 
an evident misrepresentation to say that the edi- 
tor is taking the same radical position on the 
points at issue, as do some of those that have elec- 
ted him to-this position and who are con- 
tributors to the paper. In the present pamphlet 
we have to do only with the position which the 
paper is taking and with its tendency and in- 
fluence. The question of the motive of the editor 
and other leaders, or how they were led to such 
an attitude, is a secondary one and does not con- 
cern us here, except perhaps in a general way. 

A number of papers are published in America 
by Mennonite bodies that are less conservative 
than our own communion, yet none of these pa- 
pers is taking so outspoken an attitude of anti- 
fundamentalism as the new paper that is published 
by men of our own connection. This is a fact 
that is distressing. This paper claims to stand 
for the evangelical faith and in many instances 


136 MENNONITE PUBLISHING INTERESTS 


makes use of the language of such faith, and 
again, as cannot be denied, it also speaks the lan- 
guage of modernism. Now if our people in gene- 
ral would read such literature and expose them- 
selves to such influences, there could be only one 
outcome. The American Mennonite Church would 
go the way the Church in Holland and North Ger- 
many has gone. In Holland the rise of modernism 
was similar to its rise among us. In fact the first 
representatives of modernism among the Menno- 
nites of Holland were more conservative than are 
the leaders in our liberalistic group. On the other 
hand, there are numerous non-Mennonite publi- 
cations that are taking an uncompromising attitude 
against modernism and are satisfactory as concerns 
their position on the fundamentals of the faith. 


The existence of such a paper brings home to us 
the fact that our Publishing House is doing the 
Church a service which can scarcely be overesti- 
mated. Not that the brethren of the Publication 
Board or those in immediate charge at the House 
make the claim that the work done is beyond im- 
provement, but the loyalty of the House to the 
faith and the Church in its general attitude and 
particularly as regards the issues at stake in the 
present time of crisis, is beyond question. 


OAR TeV: 


CONCLUSION 


There may be those who, when they read the 
definition of modernism in the first part of the 
present pamphlet, said to themselves that not all 
modernists in the Mennonite Church hold such 
views, at least not in regard to every point men- 
tioned. This is cheerfully admitted, as has been 
repeatedly intimated. The point is — and this can 
not be doubted — that there is a group of modernist 
Mennonite leaders, some of them decidedly radical, 
and that they are taking a more or less aggressive 
and defiant attitude against the Church, It must 
be believed that most of those who show an inclina- 
tion to follow these men are not fully informed as 
concerns their real position. 


To what length some of our modernists are 
going in the rejection of the fundamentals of the 
faith, is almost unbelievable. The letter by S. 
Burkhard which has been repeatedly mentioned, is 
one among various examples. The writer of this 
letter holds that true Mennonitism may be defined 
in one word: liberty. He disowns conservative 
theology (theology is but another word for Chris- 
tian doctrine) and all restrictions, claiming that 
they are contrary to the historic Mennonite faith. 
Indeed he says that he is opposed to making any 
theology, whether conservative or todetnist, a 
paramount issue. 


138 LIBERALISTIC MENNONITES 


If this writer’s definition of Mennonitism were 
correct, it would follow that there is not one-true 
Mennonite congregation among the Mennonites of 
America. There is in America not one congregation 
having the Mennonite name that goes to such ex- 
tremes of liberalism. One would have to go to the 
Unitarians and Universalists to find congregations 
such as this writer considers truly Mennonite. But 
these people are not Mennonites and do not desire 
to be known as such. 


The Mennonites of Holland who, as pointed 
out elsewhere, hoid similar ground with our out- 
spoken modernists, do not claim to represent the 
historic faith of the Mennonite Church, They do 
not pretend to be followers of the early Fathers of 
the Church. So far from making any such claim, 
inany of them have an unfavorable opinion of Menno 
Simons and the early Mennonites. At the time 
when the Life of Menno Simons, written by a 
Mennonite minister and historian of Holland, ap- 
peared, a number of years ago, the editor of The 
Mennonite said in a review that here the expres- 
sion “wounded in the house of his friends” was 
applicable concerning Menno Simons.. In fact, 
among the Roman Catholic authors that have 
written biographies of Martin Luther, there is at 
least one whose book is more satisfactory, consid- 
ered from the Lutheran viewpoint, than is this 
biography of Menno Simons from the Mennonite 
standpoint, though it was written by a Mennonite 
minister. We repeat that the modernist Menno- 
nites of Holland do not claim to be followers of 


FALSE VIEW OF LIBERTY 139 


the early Mennonites and that they do not 
call themselves Mennonites, but Doopsgezinden. 
On the other hand, our American modernists claim 
that their modernism is the true Mennonitism, “the 
historic faith of the Church.” They tell us that the 
conservative Mennonites have forsaken the faith of 
the Fathers. The most charitable view to take of 
such an assertion is that it is due to a lack of knowl- 
edge of Mennonite history. 


It is a matter of common knowedge that our 
Mennonite modernists advance the claim that but 
for the attitude of a few conservative leaders, the 
Church would extend to them the rights and privi- 
leges which they desire. Some of them denounce 
the leaders, bishops and conferences, and claim 
that they are wielding authority that does not right- 
fully belong to them. There are two facts which 
they overlook, The first is that our people (leaving 
the bishops out of consideration) are with few ex- 
ceptions decidedly conservative, anti-modernist. 


The other fact overlooked by the modernists is 
that their attitude toward the Church is inconsist- 
ent with the principles which they defend. They 
say the principle of liberty is the essence of the 
historic faith of the Church but, like the opponents 
of the Church in the times of persecution, they do 
not recognize the liberty (or right) of the Church 
to continue steadfast in her conservative faith and 
practice. They claim that the Church has no right 
to maintain certain regulations. If they believed 
in the principle of liberty for others as well as for 
themselves they, instead of disturbing the peace of 


140 IS THE CHURCH FREE TO ACT? 


the Church by their attitude of defiance and revolt 
(this is the expression used by some of them) would 
withdraw from a body whose position they do not 
share. Though these men are only a small hand- 
ful as compared with the bishops and leaders of the 
Church, they would force their own position upon 
the Church at large. 


The modernists and those who accept their 
leadership have undertaken to compel the Church 
to forsake her anti-modernist attitude and to give 
more liberty as concerns various regulations and 
restrictions. They think that they can force the 
Church to adopt a strictly congregational polity 
where conferencés have no authority and every con- 
gtegation is free as concerns its attitude to modern- 
ism, restrictions and regulations. Now by taking 
such an attitude toward the Church, the modernist 
leaders, as intimated above, are assuming far greater 
authority than our bishops ate exercising. It is 
strange indeed that they denounce all ‘overhead 
authority” and then usurp authority which would 
exceed the power of those who have been chosen by 
the Church to fill places of authority. While some 
of them, on the one hand, claim that their attitude is 
one of loyalty to the Church, they, on the other hand, 
confess that they are in a state of revolt and encour- 
age our young people to rise in revolt against the 
Church. 

There are those who show an inclination to 
follow the modernist leaders for no other reason 
than because they desite a let-up on the part of the 
Church as concerns various regulations. But so 


AN ILLUSTRATION 141 


long as some of the principal leaders in the newly 
risen group are modernists, there can be no quest- 
as to the tendency of the movement, Experience 
shows that churches that befriend themselves with 
modernism are fast forsaking the Christian faith. 
This is the inevitable consequence. 

If an illustration is permissible, modernism 
claims that the vines that are planted in the vineyard 
and are cultivated by the Church are not true 
grape vines. The more radical modernists would 
not recognize any of the vines as acceptable, while 
the more moderate ones disapprove of some of 
them. They assert that something better should 
be planted, yet they are willing to let the Church, 
or the conservatives, retain the belief that the old- 
fashioned grape vines are the real vines. All 
they ask of the Church is to give to modernist 
plants the same right as to the vines. 


The plants of the Church and the plants of 
modernism are opposites and cannot both be grape 
vines. The plants of modernism have, as a rule, 
well-sounding names. When viewed in the light 
of Scripture, they turn out to be of the nature of 
briars and burdock and the like. Some one may 
say it is harsh language to speak of the doctrines 
of modernism as briars and weeds, But if the 
denial of the Christian truth did not deserve the 
predicate of weeds, it would follow that the evan- 
gelical doctrines are not grape vines. 

Modernists say, it is wrong for the Church to 
be dogmatic and define which plants are true 
grape vines. They hold that the nature of the 


142 NEW PLANTS IN VINEYARD 


plants that are to be cultivated is a secondary 
matter, therefore the Church is out of place when 
it insists on having only the old-fashioned vines. 
They hold that Mennonitism means liberty, and 
that it is contrary to the historic faith of the 
Church to deny them the right to plant in the 
vineyard what they may choose. Instead of starting 
their own vineyard, they insist that a true Menno- 
nite Church must permit them to set out their 
own plants in the Church’s vineyard. They de- 
mand that their plants must be given the same 
rights in the vineyard as the vines which the 
Church is planting and cultivating. They hold 
that the right of the Church to cultivate the vine- 
yard does not mean that the plants of modernism 
may be destroyed. The most offensive claim of 
modernists is that the Fathers of the Church have 
ste the plants of modernism in the vineyard 


Now unless the Church maintains the right 
to treat the modernist plants as that which they 
are in the light of God’s word, there can be only 
one outcome. The briars and weeds of anti-fun- 
damentalism and modernism will take possession 
of the vineyard of the Lord. The grape vines 
stand no chance where weeds are given a chance. 
Such a place would not deserve the name of a 
vineyard. 


Let no one suppose for a moment that in this 
time of apostasy and worldliness the Church can 
maintain the faith without taking a decided stand 
against modernism, making an earnest effort, 
heeding the admonition to “put on the whole ar- 


“STAND FAST IN THE FAITH” 143 


mor of God.” Human nature is prone to err. 
Even Goethe, the greatest German poet, though 
he was not a Christian believer said, men follow 
error for the reason that to do so is easier than 
to embrace truth. To take the course of least re- 
sistance and yield to the anti-Christian spirit of 
the age is easier than to be loyal to Jesus Christ 
and fight the good fight of faith. It requires 
more earnest and determined effort to follow the 
truth than to yield to error. 

It cannot be too strongly emphasized that 
compromise with modernism means defeat. The 
thought that the cause of the old faith can be 
enhanced by a small measure of modernization 
is a delusion. “One thing is certain,’ says Dr. 
Henry B. Smith, “that infidel science will rout 
everything except thorough-going Christian or- 
thodoxy. All the flabby theories will go over- 
board. The fight will be between a stiff, thorough- 
going orthodoxy and a stiff, thorough-going infi- 
delity.” A position of compromise is a losing 
position. It means that you virtually accept the 
liberal viewpoint. 

We, as Mennonites, realize that we fall far 
short of exemplifying the Christian life in its 
fullness and of carrying out the will of the Lord. 
Yet as concerns faith and principles, we believe 
the Church would be disloyal to God’s Word if 
it compromised them. Our faith and principles 
are our great treasure and it is for us to heed 
the injunction, “Hold fast that which thou hast, 
that no man take thy crown.” 


BY THE SAME 


AUTHOR 


Modern Religious Liberalism 
EXCERPTS FROM REVIEWS 


The Princeton Theological Re- 
view:— ‘A book of unique worth. 
There is none more urgently need- 
ed today, and there is none that 
could take its place.” 


The Presbyterian:—‘We know 
of no other book that in plain 
language so well sets forth the 
real nature of the modern reli- 
gious views.” . 

The Free Methodist:—‘‘This is 
by far the strongest and _ best 
work on the question of the 
higher criticism that we have 


read. Do not fail to secure a 
copy.” 
The King’s Business:—‘‘This 


is one of the strongest and most 
timely books that has come to 
our notice for some time. If you 
want a summing up of the mod- 
ern apostasy with plenty of proof 
in the shape of actual quotations 
from leading theological professors 
and ministers of the liberal 
stamp—here it is.” 


Lutheran Witness:—"This is a 
book which harrows the soul. It 
is the voluntary plea in bank- 
ruptey of the modern leaders of 
the Church. There is no other 
book like it. In all our reading 
we have never found such a com- 
plete and conclusive indictment of 
the New Theology. We recom- 
mend this book especially to our 
pastors.” 


Union Theological Seminary 
Review (Richmond, Va.) :—‘‘None 


of us can afford to close his eyes 
to what is here disclosed. Our 
counsel is, read this book and 
then square your shoulders and © 
tighten your belt.” 


The Christian (London) :—‘“Tho 
many have taken in hand to ex- 
pose Modernist negations of the 
Faith, no one has done this im- 
portant work with greater thor- 
oughness than the author of the 
volume before us. This is a book 
for which we are _ profoundly 
thankful.” 


Lutheran Standard:—‘‘This book 
stands up clean-limbed, straight 
and rugged like a young oak tree, 
with not so much as a leaf or 
twig wilted or withered. The 
author makes a clean-cut defence 
of the old Bible doctrine.” 


Herald and Presbyter:—‘This 
volume is a sturdy, loyal and vi- 
tal defense of the Gospel, and 
an unanswerable arraignment of 
the destructive and irrational new 
theology.” 


Professor Gerald Birney Smith, 
of the University of Chicago, in 
a review—decidedly unapprecia- 
tive, on the whole—published in 
The Journal of Religion, says: 
“The book is marked by an ear- 
nest spirit, and the author has 
evidently endeavored to pile up 
the evidence in scholarly and 
dignified form. As he presents it, 
it is well calculated to make a 
profound impression.” 


320 pages, cloth binding. Price $1.50 postpaid 
ORDER FROM 
MENNONITE PUBLISHING HOUSE 


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Pa. 


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‘ 


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